How to draw random samples from blogs, social networks, microbloggings and other social media sites? In an article just published in Social Science Computer Review, we presented a method, called "Random Digit Search" (RDS), to sample users on a probability basis from one of the largest blog sites in China. The method, which is adapted from "Random Digit Dialing" (RDD) in telephone survey sampling, is generally applicable to other social media sites that assign all users with a numeric ID number.
Zhu, J. J. H. et al. (2011). A Random Digit Search (RDS) Method for Sampling of Blogs and Other User-Generated Content. Social Science Computer Review, 29 (3), 327-339.
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