A Guide for Purposive Sampling on Twitter

In this paper, we demonstrate how to use Twitter to conduct behavioral research and to guide researchers who might benefit from using this social media platform to effectively recruit survey participants. We begin by discussing the advantages researchers gain from using Twitter to recruit subjects for surveys, such as respondent anonymity, purposive sampling (which allows researchers to find respondents who participate in a topic of interest), the ability to reach respondents quickly to investigate ephemeral events, and advantages in replicating subject populations in recruitment. We offer a guide that illustrates the mechanics of using Twitter to recruit subjects and present a successful case study that illustrates how we used this technique in the real world to recruit survey participants. We provide solutions for common issues researchers might encounter when using Twitter to recruit subjects, such as nonresponse bias due to not responding to tweets in a timely manner, initial unwillingness to participate, and the inability to find appropriate survey respondents.