RESEARCH DESIGN : 57

diferent stages in the research process (like the study described in

Box 2.1 below, when the researcher, Janice Morse, began with an
open and inductive approach and, upon discovering a specifc phe-
nomenon, developed diferent hypotheses abductively that were
tested in a comparative design with deductive elements).
Who should be interviewed? Tis is the question of selection
and sampling. According to Roulston (who follows LeCompte and
Preissle), one needs to draw a distinction between selection
and sampling (Roulston, 2010, p. 81). Selection refers to the
general decisions concerning who should be in focus in the study
(e.g. adults sufering from depression) and sampling refers to the
process of fnding a subset of the population that has been selected
as relevant (e.g. 20 depressed adults, an equal number of women
and men, recruited from Clinic X in Y-ville, representing adults
sufering from depression). In most quantitative studies, the goal
is to obtain a representative sample, which may enable researchers
to generalize from the sample to the general population. Tis can
also be a goal in qualitative research, but because most qualitative
projects aim for thorough analyses in depthrather than
larger and broader analysesthey ofen employ other sampling
strategies.
Sampling becomes a particularly pertinent issue in case-study
research, because researchers study just one single case, and
Flyvbjerg (2006) discusses a number of diferent ways of selection,
based on diferent interests.
Random selection can be employed to avoid systematic biases
in the sample (here the size of the sample is decisive for gener-
alization, but this is ofen not relevant for qualitative studies). In
general, random selection as a conscious choice is employed only
in quantitative projects.
Information-oriented selection is normally more relevant in
qualitative inquiry. Te goal is here to maximize the utility of
information from small samples and single cases. Cases are selected
on the basis of expectations about their information content
(Flyvbjerg, 2006, p. 230). Tis means that the researchers knowl-
edge about the feld becomes relevant. With information-oriented
selection, the researcher can choose to look for (1) extreme cases
in order to be able to say something about the phenomenon in
its purest form (e.g. adults sufering from severe depression),