On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 10:25 AM, Elke Greifeneder <elke.greifeneder@googlemail.com> wrote:
I am working on how to collect purposeful data in digital library evaluations.
(Side note: For many of my colleagues, this would probably be program evaluation or assessment and not research. It's usually not a terribly important distinction but some people insist on making it.)
My question is whether this produces representative data?
I do a lot of quantitative work, much of driven by survey data, so my response is framed by those sensibilities. In much of my work, the questions of representativeness and generalizability are closely linked to the phenomenon I am studying. Representativeness denotes a context i.e. In *what way* is the sample representative/not representative of the population? Since you could answer that question in an infinite number of ways (gender, age, location, SES, education level, etc.), you should limit your inquiry to those characteristics which you know or suspect to be important to the specific phenomenon you are studying. So you have to figure out the personal characteristics that are important to your study and if your sample differs from your population in significant ways. And you know your phenomenon and population better than anyone else here so you're in the best position to know the key characteristics for your study. To be completely honest, the fact that you're asking the question indicates to me that you have at least a suspicion that your sample may not be completely representative of your population. Often there is nothing you can to do to directly address that problem but sometimes you can even then you can note it as a potential limitation and use some caution in generalizing your findings. Kevin