Some Insights Related to Social Network Analysis Data Collection Challenges -- A Research Note

This research note discusses opportunities and challenges of using online survey engines for social network analysis (SNA) data collection and assessing sample size and representativeness. The discussion is based on a case study of SNA data collection for a pilot research on health-relevant policy networks in Canada. Our approach demonstrates how to use generic online survey tools in long-term snowball sampling campaigns and how to compute population size estimates through capture-mark-recapture formulas, thus solving a significant methodological challenge of collecting snowball data for unbounded networks.