Purposeful Sample for Autoethnographer Communities of Practice

Further developing my research idea, I now realize I did not quite list the population, or participants, I will seek to research and from whom I will gather my data.

I suppose they will be discussed in the Data Collection area of my research outline (which leads me to another question–is the outline I posted called a research outline, or is it referred to as something else?).

Given that we have 4 weeks for this (August 7-September 6), there is really no time to waste at all going down the wrong path, so I want to do something that is workable, doable, and also worth doing.

Given these limitations, I think interviewing 2 people may be sufficient. Given that I want to do a narrative inquiry of them, I will also read their autoethnographic work to see if there is any evidence to support or otherwise address my research questions. As a qualification for this research, it would seem that the 2 people should have completed and published their autoethnographic work, with publishing used in a broad sense to include presenting it at a conference, published in a journal or online location, or even published it as a paper submitted for a degree program.

I will try to locate participants by posting my request to a Yahoo Group that deals with autoethnography, as well as directly emailing some colleagues who work in this area to see if they know anybody who may be interested in this. I do not have any colleagues in mind to directly ask if they are willing to assist with this interview, which I expect will be about 30 minutes most likely via phone, though I will not be opposed to working with people who I already know (as I do not know much about the topic of this research). I am planning to record the interviews and transcribe them (I just bought a digital recorder and phone recording wire, and am about to purchase a USB pedal for the actual transcription).

Will appreciate some feedback on this, as I will use this as the basis for my ethical form that I need to complete and submit by the end of this week.