i am currently doing a thesis of qualitative descriptive research about students computational thinking ability. based on other research that i read, they categorized the student's ability into 3 categories and need to decide 2 person form each category to be interviewed but i could not find the theoretical reason behind it, why is it must be 2?
There is no reason why it "must" be two -- that is simply what these authors chose. I personally think it is too low. What if the two participants in a category were quite different? That is why the usual criterion for qualitative sampling is saturation -- you collect data until you are not learning anything new. In this case, you would do that in each category.
I would guess that the authors went with the minimum sample size based on the rule of thumb. Based on the minimum sample size in qualitative studies using in-depth interviews that range between 5 to 50 participants (Dworkin, 2012), in order to achieve at least five (5) participants in total, two (2) from each category (they had three) were needed.
Dworkin, S.L. Sample Size Policy for Qualitative Studies Using In-Depth Interviews. Arch Sex Behav 41, 1319–1320 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-012-0016-6
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