Convenience Sampling through Facebook

Abstract

My current research aims to explore how the transmission of signals of approval and disapproval, as set forth by William McDougall, operates on the social network Facebook, an online environment devoid of physical face-to-face exchanges. In doing so, it investigates the effects of such exchanges of approval and disapproval on the behaviour and practices of Facebook users, and in particular with regard to these users’ online identity presentations and management. While performing a background investigation into sociological research on this social network, work that had been done by Christine Brickman Bhutta came to my attention, where Bhutta discussed and evaluated the use of Facebook as a sampling frame. I found this of great interest; in particular, I was curious regarding the use of Facebook to research activity on Facebook itself. I therefore undertook to adapt Bhutta's method to my own experimental research design. I chose to implement this method for the pilot study of my research, partly to test this method's efficacy and viability.

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