Nabila decided to undertake a qualitative study collecting data through semi$-$structured

interviews as these would provide opportunities for open conversation to take place, ena$-$

bling her and the participants to talk about ideas they saw as significant. However, Nabila had

to think carefully about how many interviews she needed to undertake, how to gain access to

potential participants and how to select her sample. Fortunately, a friend who worked for a

charity that supports social entrepreneurs agreed to act as her gatekeeper, brokering access

to social entrepreneurs who had been supported by the charity. The charity agreed to provide

her with an anonymised list of over $200$ social entrepreneurs from whom she could select

those she wanted to interview. The charity would then make the request for the interview on

Nabila's behalf and, if the social entrepreneur agreed, provide Nabila with their contact details.

She now faced the challenges of how many participants would be needed and how to

select them.

Nabila decided she would plan to interview $30$ participants as she felt this was a reasonable

number. All potential participants would have to satisfy two criteria to be selected. Firstly, they

would have to be social entrepreneurs with real$-$life experience of running a social enterprise, in

other words the participants' enterprises needed to have explicit social, environment, and cultural

aims. Secondly participants would have to be aged $50$ and over at the time of the interview. For$-$

tunately, the charity could provide such data for all the social entrepreneurs they had supported.

At her next meeting with her project tutor Nabila outlined the criteria for selecting her

sample and her intended sample size. The project tutor appeared concerned by what Nabila

was saying and asked a number of questions, which Nabila was unable to answer. These

included:

$1$ Provide me with the reason why your plan is to interview $30$ rather than $15$ or even $50$

entrepreneurs who meet your criteria.

$2$ You have explained how you intend to select your sample without making any reference to

the type of sampling or the technique you intend to use. Can you state whether you intend

to use either probability or non$-$probability sampling and explain why?

$3$ It is likely that the anonymised list of over $200$ social entrepreneurs provided by the charity

will contain more than $30$ who meet your criteria fully. If this is the case how will you select

those you actually want to interview? You need to name the sampling technique or tech$-$

niques you intend to use and provide me with a clear justified exposition.

$4$ Outline the concept of data saturation and explain how you could usefully apply this to the

research you are planning to undertake.