What is an adequate sample size? Operationalising data saturation for theory-based interview studies

By J. Francis, Marie Johnston, C. Robertson, L. Glidewell, V. Entwistle, M. Eccles, Jeremy M. Grimshaw. Psychology and Health, 2010

3,277 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bfdebf46bde1c1d6ab531de4fb239944ce1aaad7

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Citations in the corpus

Code Saturation Versus Meaning Saturation: How Many Interviews Are Enough? (2016, methodology): “Our study responds to calls for more methodological research on operationalizing saturation (by Francis et al., 2010; Guest et al., 2006; Morse, 2015).”
A guide to using the Theoretical Domains Framework of behaviour change to investigate implementation problems (2017, background): “recommend that a minimum of 10 interviews be conducted for initial data analysis, followed by three additional interviews until no new theme emerges (stopping criterion) [56].”
Policies for transitioning towards a circular economy: Expectations from the European Union (EU) (2020, background): “The sampling procedure was terminated at the point of thematic saturation, when no new policies emerged over the course of three subsequent interviews (Francis et al., 2010).”
Saturation in qualitative research: exploring its conceptualization and operationalization (2017, background): “…led some commentators to argue for the need for qualitative researchers to provide a more thorough and transparent reporting of how they achieved saturation in their research, thus allowing readers to assess the validity of this claim (Bowen 2008; Francis et al. 2010), our arguments go beyond this.”
What Influences Saturation? Estimating Sample Sizes in Focus Group Research (2019, neutral): “There is a small but emerging body of methodological literature assessing saturation in studies using in-depth interviews (Francis et al., 2010; Guest et al., 2006; Hennink et al., 2017).”
How Many Interviews Are Enough to Identify Metathemes in Multisited and Cross-cultural Research? Another Perspective on Guest, Bunce, and Johnson’s (2006) Landmark Study (2017, methodology): “Although the authors suggested that 13 interviews could be enough, tests of their approach found that, in one study, they did not reach study-wise saturation after 14 interviews, and, in another study, they reached study-wise saturation after 17 interviews (Francis et al. 2010). Galvin (2015) presen”
How Many Focus Groups Are Enough? Building an Evidence Base for Nonprobability Sample Sizes (2017, result): “Results from two empirical studies reported by Francis et al. (2010) are congruent with earlier findings (Guest et al. 2006; Morgan et al. 2002).”
A simple method to assess and report thematic saturation in qualitative research (2020, background): “[17] Authors posit that researcher should establish two key parameters prior to analysis: Initial Analysis Sample–the prespecified number of interviews included in the first round of data analysis.”
Making sense of blockchain technology: How will it transform supply chains? (2019, methodology): “Following guidelines on purposive sampling and data saturation (Francis et al., 2010; Guest et al., 2006; Glaser and Strauss, 2017) and considering our resource and time constraints, we used an initial target number of interviews of between 10 and 20.”