Techniques for Sampling Online Text-Based Data Sets

The chapter reviews traditional sampling techniques and suggests adaptations relevant to big data studies of text downloaded from online media such as email messages, online gaming, blogs, micro-blogs (e.g., Twitter), and social networking websites (e.g., Facebook). The authors review methods of probability, purposeful, and adaptive sampling of online data. They illustrate the use of these sampling techniques via published studies that report analysis of online text.