For researchers on the lookout for a qualified pool of respondents for their surveys, social media can be a tempting place to look. However recent researches indicates that most online researchers (60%) aren’t drawing from public social networks to gather survey responses. But when we dug a little deeper, we discovered that most researchers were hesitant about getting responses through social media because they couldn’t control who took their surveys. In some ways social media is the ultimate qualitative research tool. The trick is how to use social media on both open social media networks as well as on private social media networks in order to conduct useful research. A private social media network is distinct from one that is open to the public like Facebook or LinkedIn. In a private network individuals must be invited to participate. This also typically means that all conversations that take place on the network are private to network members.

Private social media networks can be excellent proxies for these more expensive qualitative research methodologies. This is sometimes called an “online research community” or an “online research micro-community.” There are really just two questions you need to answer to find out if you should investigate opportunities for gathering data via social media surveys:

-Do you have a broadly defined population?

-Is there a factor of fun or personal interest in the data you’re collecting?

Thanks Ariful

I think the main difficulty is to establish a consistent relationship between the sample and the research universe. Usually, the population on social networks is not measurable accurately. So, there is great difficulty in ensuring the representativeness of the sample.

I think most SM- channels provide excellent opportunities to reach a large number of participants. Nevertheless all surveys that are popularized by social media have a bias based on the participant selection, that should be addressed in your discussion.