Interestingly, I’m told by a psychologist
friend researching the formation of depression in migrants that
current, more reflexive literature on quantitative, empirical research
argues that the fuss over sample sizes (i.e., the need to have a
large sample if the claims and results are to have any scholastic
purchase on the phantasm of veridicality) is problematic in all
sorts of ways (see Edwards, 1997; Silverman, 2001). For instance,
at what point can one say a sample is representative of the community,
user-consumers, demographic, socio-technical network, etc. under
analysis? As Pierre Bourdieu (1973) argued so acutely and with such
verve, public opinion does not exist. What exists, for Bourdieu,
is the discursive form of the survey or opinion poll, the interests
that drive it, and the ends to which it is put.
