Selection Criteria
Choosing the right interviewee criteria for your research needs
In exploratory interviews, we dive deep into an area of interest, with each interview contributing to a growing understanding of the problem space. Because you will be working with a smaller sample size in this phase, it is crucial that you select participants who can best inform the research questions and enhance your understanding of the topic area under study. This method is called purposive sampling, because you are being intentional and purposeful about the audience you will be selecting.
Purposive Sampling
Purposive sampling is where a researcher selects a sample based on their knowledge about the study and population. Also known as judgemental, subjective, or selective sampling.
Remember that the goal of your study is to collect rich descriptions of an experience from people who have lived it. Therefore, you must select participants that have first-hand knowledge of the research topic and are willing to speak about it.
Defining Selection Criteria
Review research goals What are you hoping to learn about during this phase of research? For example, you may be aiming to learn about the experience of high school teachers as they prepare lessons for their classes and you are interested in x, y, z aspects of their role. By clearly defining your research objectives, you can begin to think about the type of people that will help you learn more about the problem under study.
Brainstorm key attributes What kind of people will help you learn more about x, y and z? We already know we will be talking to high school teachers, however there could be other important attributes to consider. For instance, we may want to include criteria for institution type (private vs. public), as teachers may have varying levels of flexibility in preparing learning materials for their classrooms. Perhaps we are also concerned with seniority level (senior vs. junior), as our senior teachers will have more established routines compared to newer staff. You could also explore teaching status (full-time, part-time, casual), jurisdiction, digital tools used...the possibilities are endless. The important part of this exercise is to identify which characteristics are important to include or exclude from your sample, given your key research questions.
Narrow down: Finally, you will need to narrow your selection to a shortlist of key attributes that will guide your screening process. Your selection criteria should be broad enough to incorporate diverse viewpoints and outliers, but narrow enough to represent your key questions. You may also want to consider how you intend to recruit this audience, as more specialized samples will be more difficult to reach. Your criteria could look something like this:
Professional role: High School Teacher, public sector, full-time
Grades taught: 9-12 (recruit for a range)
Subjects taught: Recruit for a range
Teaching Jurisdiction: Ontario
Aligning with your team
It's important at this stage to share your recruitment criteria with your team. Prepare to defend the choices you have made - after all, these traits were selected purposefully, so you should always have a reason for the attributes that made the short-list. Aligning at this stage will increase team buy-in for the following stages of research and demonstrate rigour in your approach.
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