Hi Karyn, In addition to the great suggestions you have already received, I wonder in your literature review might give you a clue as to sample size for your study? Looking at similar studies, can you get a sense for the number of blogs you will need? Also, does the theoretical framework itself speak to this issue? I'm interested to hear how you progress as I am conducting a related study of gender and disclosure on microblogs. Using Twitter as the site of study and a stratified, proportional random sample, my study analyzes microblogging disclosures made by users across two dimensions -- gender and identity (parent or professional). On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 5:29 PM, Karyn Hollis <karyn.hollis@villanova.edu>wrote:
Hi All-- This is a newbie question. I am planning to do a quantitative data analysis to study blogs for gender differences in CMC. Are there any rules for the size of samples? Would comparing male to female blog texts of a total of 50,000 words each be enough to claim statistical significance for any differences I find? Thanks for any advice, Karyn Hollis Villanova University _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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-- Best Regards, S. Courtney Walton scw@umail.ucsb.edu http://www.scourtneywalton.com MA/PhD Student Department of Communication 4807 Ellison Hall University of California, Santa Barbara 93106