I have ordered a copy of Creswell's Qual book and perhaps it will answer my question once it arrives but thought I'd also try to tap the collective wisdom of this group. For my master's research I am studying the impact of motherhood on the work lives of women - specifically, what impact they *anticipated*, the constraints and supports they encountered as they worked towards their various plans, and how successful they feel about their adjustments. I want to examine several of the possible paths mothers follow (keep working more or less straight, scale back or change jobs to accommodate motherhood, opt out temporarily or permanently, etc.), so I need a purposive sample for my qualitative interviews.

My question is: how would I best go about selecting my interviewees? I was thinking I would first recruit participants with a snowball approach of advertising the study on Facebook, through various professional networks and also at some local daycares/schools. I would then direct all willing participants to a very basic online questionnaire that could serve to "screen" them on a few demographic questions and maybe just one broad "how significantly did motherhood impact the trajectory of your work life?" question, and choose a few women from each path to interview. Is that approach methodologically sound? How do others strike a balance between obtaining diversity without hand-picking participants? Because I'll be conducting the interviews and transcribing + analyzing all by myself, I'm limited in time/bandwidth and want to ensure my smallish sample size can still yield results that capture the various experiences mothers. Appreciate any suggestions/feedback you research sages can provide!