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It became appropriate to select a research sample on the basis of “[my] own knowledge of the population, its elements and the nature of the research aims, in short based on the researcher’s judgment and the purpose of the study” (Babbie, 1995, p. 113). I employed both purposive and snowball sampling techniques to identify the respondents who are involved in this study. Purposive, or judgmental, sampling is a conscious effort to select subjects who seem to meet the study’s needs (T. L. Baker, 1999, p. 138). These nonprobability sampling approaches provide the researcher with the capacity to actively select the respondents who are relevant to the research design and to discover, understand, and gain more insight on issues that are crucial to the study (Merriam, 2002; Patton, 1990).
The initial selection of participants for this study was purposive, based on my own personal relationships with individuals who have been involved heavily in protest activities or public initiatives, who display support for activist causes, or who are known commentators on matters of public interest. In addition, I undertook an extensive literature review on the nature of governance and the current condition of civil society vis-à-vis the structural power of the state and how citizen politics (particularly popular protest) in Jamaica is constituted or configures itself within this process. I was able to clearly identify various respondents at multiple levels of society who could explicate the current conditions that drive protests and influence social order in Jamaica. I was also able to make sense of the dynamic processes of change (in values, politics, and culture) that are taking place in the country.
I was aware, however, that popular protest, although it encompasses cultural forms of resistance such as music and performance, mainly means street demonstrations and blockades in the Jamaican context and takes place episodically and largely spontaneously. As such, there are no organized lists of protestors and very few officially recognized protest lobbies who are available to be interviewed. It is thus unlikely that a researcher will be on the spot when a protest occurs. Indeed, in Jamaica, there are rarely any predictable signs or official notices to alert citizens of a protest action.