Hi,

I conducted an interview study with participants that were extremely difficult to recruit (I have documented that in detail in my methodology chapter, which I am currently writing up). My sample size (n=21) was limited by the limits of funding (participants were paid a considerable amount of money), as well as the constraints and difficulties of recruiting (and hence time too - all very practical reasons).

Having said this, the participant group is very homogeneous and by the time I reached the predetermined sample size, I felt I had probably reached thematic/descriptive saturation, though not necessarily theoretical saturation (as analysis was conducted after all the interviews were gathered together).

I'm just wondering whether above will be OK (and is justifiable) and how to maybe word it in a more positive manner?

Thanks :)

Hi Chococake,

I was in a similar boat, with only 20 participants. To 'justify' I discussed the difficulty of recruiting as well as what you just described, similar results in the data.

The below article is a good article to read about how to justify low interview rates.

Guest, G., Bunce, A., & Johnson, L. (2006). How Many Interviews Are Enough?: An Experiment with Data Saturation and Variability Field Methods. Methods, 18(1), 59-82.

I had a similar number of interviewees, but the pool of subjects was so small that this was perfectly acceptable for a qualitative study.

Thank you both. It is reassuring to here that a small sample size was accepted.

However, may I ask how you justified stopping at where you stopped? Did you reach saturation? Or was it a matter of practicality?

For me it was both practicality and saturation of data.

I also had a homogeneous group and stated that my research was influenced by a particular lens (white, middle-class, male etc) and therefore not representative of all men.

Ditto here - explained that reached the greatest number of subjects I could via a snowball sampling technique and also that most themes reached saturation. I also mentioned other sources of information.