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Facebook as a Sampling Tool in Migration Research: A Survey of Polish Migrants in Four European Countries
September 14, 2016 at 1:15 PM to 2:30 PM
Location: | 502 Southam Hall Southam Hall |
Cost: | Free |
The 2016 Emerging Scholars and Insight Series presents a public guest talk by Steffen Pötzschke of GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences, Mannheim (Germany). Steffen Pötzschke is an International Collaborator, Mobility & Politics Research Collective. Please find a summary of the talk below:
Migration researchers face one of their most important practical challenges usually right in the beginning of their projects: It is the question how to reach and sample the target population. This issue becomes even more of a problem in cross-national research, in which suitable sampling frames existent in one country might not be available in another. However, migrants increasingly use social networking sites (SNS) and internet based communication to stay connected with individuals in their countries of origin and elsewhere. Therefore, it is worthwhile to examine possible ways in which such networks might be used as sampling tools.
The presentation will put forward findings from a study in which more than 1,000 Polish migrants in four countries were successfully sampled via Facebook advertisements and completed a survey during a four weeks field period in late 2015. This method is comparatively inexpensive and suitable both as part of the sampling strategy in bigger projects and as a sampling method for smaller research endeavors. The talk will provide details on theoretical considerations, possible limitations and the practical implementation of this approach.