Improve the Quality
of Your Qualitative Samples
Qualitative sampling involves decisions not only about which people to observe and/or interview
but also about settings, events, and social processes. Qualitative studies call for continuous
refocusing and redrawing of study parameters during fi eldwork, but some initial selection still is
required. A conceptual framework and research questions can help set the foci and boundaries
for sampling decisions.
Sampling may look easy, but settings have subsettings. For instance, schools have classrooms,
classrooms have cliques, and cliques have individuals, so deciding where to look is not easy.
Within any case, social phenomena proliferate such as (again using the classroom example)
class lessons, teachers' questioning techniques, student unruliness, and use of innovations—
these also must be sampled. But as much as you might want to, you cannot study everyone
everywhere doing everything. Your choices—whom to look at or talk with, where, when, about
what, and why—place limits on the conclusions you can draw and on how confi dent you and
others feel about them. Sampling is crucial for later analysis, so how do we manage it all?
from the authors of Qualitative Data Analysis, 4e,
Matthew B. Miles, A. Michael Huberman,
and Johnny Saldaña
Ideas for improving
your sampling
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