Online Deviant Case Sampling

Online deviant case sampling is a purposive qualitative sampling strategy in which the researcher deliberately seeks out and recruits participants who represent extreme, unusual, or outlier instances of the phenomenon under study, using online channels such as forums, social media, specialist communities, or digital registries. It inherits the logic of Patton's deviant (extreme) case sampling and applies it in internet-mediated research contexts where rare or hard-to-reach atypical cases can be located more efficiently than through face-to-face methods.