Not by the Book: Facebook as Sampling Frame

Social networking sites and online questionnaires make it possible to do survey research faster, cheaper, and with less assistance than ever before. The methods are especially well-suited for snowball sampling of elusive subpopulations. This note describes my experience surveying thousands of Catholics via Facebook in less than a month, at little expense, and without hired help. Although the respondents were disproportionately female, young, educated, and religiously active, their responses preserved key correlations found in standard surveys conducted by Gallup and the GSS. I relate my methods to existing web-based methods and offer concrete suggestions for future work.

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