Online word-of-mouth in West Africa: the effects of snowball sampling on completion rate, respondent demographics, and survey responses
Provides practical insights for researchers using social media for survey recruitment in developing regions, though findings are incremental.
This study compares river sampling (Facebook ads) and snowball sampling (word-of-mouth) for online surveys in West Africa, finding that snowball sampling yields higher completion rates, more new users and women, but shorter responses and less time spent on the survey.
We place geo-targeted advertisements on Facebook to encourage users to fill out an online survey, following a process known as river sampling. We discovered a large number and variety of users also came to our survey through snowball sampling, including shared social media posts and other word-of-mouth referral methods. In this article, we analyze the differences between the respondents from river and snowball sampling. We present evidence that the respondents obtained by snowball sampling are more likely to complete the survey and contain a higher fraction of new users and women than those obtained by river sampling. Additionally, the evidence indicates that users from snowball sampling give shorter responses and take less time on the survey than users from river sampling. We hope these findings provide insight for other researchers who incorporate social media strategies when fielding surveys.