Statistical Sidebar
Journal of Visual
Convenience Sampling Revisited:
Embracing Its Limitations Through
Thoughtful Study Design
Robert Wall Emerson1
In one of the first Statistical Sidebars I wrote
(published in the March–April 2015 issue of
the Journal of Visual Impairment & Blind-
ness), readers were introduced to types of
sampling. The point was made that when con-
ducting research in the field of blindness,
researchers often make use of convenience
sampling. A convenience sample occurs when
participants who fit a study’s criteria are
enrolled in the study, sometimes by simply
going to a location that is likely to have a large
number of people who are blind (e.g., to a
state school for blind students or a convention
of a blindness organization). The main draw-
back of convenience sampling is that the study
results lack generalizability due to the bias of
the sample. As such, a study that uses conve-
nience sampling is somewhat caught between
a single-subject approach (where a treatment
or intervention is used with very few partici-
pants to focus on the efficacy of that treatment
or intervention) and a randomized control
group approach (where a sample of partici-
pants are randomly chosen from a large pop-
ulation and randomly assigned to treatment
and control groups). The use of a larger sample
through convenience sampling, rather than uti-
lizing a single-subject approach, allows for
Impairment & Blindness
2021, Vol. 115(1) 76-77
ª American Foundation
for the Blind 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0145482X20987707
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slightly greater generalization, but the lack of
random selection of participants means that
selection bias restricts large-scale generaliza-
tion of the findings.
In the current issue, the author of the article
entitled, “Locus of Control in College Stu-
dents with and Without Visual Impairments,
and the Visual Characteristics That Affect It,”
used convenience sampling to gather partici-
pants who are blind for the study. He put
together a sample of 15 participants who are
blind. This sample is larger than a single-
subject approach, thus, it has the potential to
show that any experimental effects are more
generalizable than they would be if the author
had studied just one individual. The conveni-
ence sampling procedure the author used,
however, drastically limits generalizability
1
Department of Blindness and Low Vision Studies,
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA
Corresponding author:
Robert Wall Emerson, PhD, Department of
Blindness and Low Vision Studies, Western
Michigan University, 1903 West Michigan
Avenue, Kalamazoo, MI 49008, USA.
Email: robert.wall@wmich.edu
Emerson
of study effects, since all participants were
college students from one college in Iran. In
addition, the study’s subjects were college
students who happened to visit their college’s
center for students who are blind on a partic-
ular Sunday. It would be a stretch to general-
ize the study effects from such a sample to a
much larger group, given the particulars of
place, time, and circumstance.
To try to limit the drawbacks resulting
from convenience sampling, these authors
also hand-picked a set of participants with
sight who matched the blind participants on
the variables of gender, education, and age
(variables that previous research showed
might be particularly impactful on the vari-
ables of interest of the current study). By
creating this matched group, the authors
were better able to isolate the relationship
77
of blindness with the study’s variable of
interest. In essence, the author embraced the
limitations of convenience sampling and
designed the study to specifically mitigate
those limitations, as much as he was able.
The take-home point is that although the
“gold standard” for research designs that
study groups is to use a randomly drawn
sample and randomly assign participants to
treatment and control groups, it is generally
not possible to gather such large groups in
the field of visual impairment because of the
fact that vision loss is a low-incidence dis-
ability. Instead, researchers in the field need
to determine what are the limitations of small
sample sizes, conveniently drawn samples,
and heterogeneous groups and then use study
designs, data structures, and statistical anal-
yses that address those limitations.