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Baer et al. (2003) used this approach to calculate subsample sizes in their cross-cultural study of nervios. They anticipated a moderate level of consensus (.50) and used stringent criteria for accuracy (.95) and level of confidence (.999). Using these conservative assumptions, the tables in Weller (2007) show that at least 29 informants were necessary in each research site. Baer et al. went a bit beyond the minimum and set subsample sizes at 40 per site “to be sure that we had sufficient individuals for comparative purposes within samples” (p. 323).

ssss1 shows how Christopher McCarty and I incorporated consensus theory and emerging evidence about saturation into a quota sampling design for semistructured interviews with African Americans in Tallahassee, FL. The goal of this study was to identify how the experience of racism and other social stressors shapes the risk of high blood pressure among African Americans. The exploratory phase included a round of semistructured interviews with a projected sample size of 48. We arrived at this sample size by identifying four individual attributes related to the experience of racism among African Americans: gender, age, skin tone, and socioeconomic status (SES). We then set quotas for all possible combinations of these attributes, treating them simplistically as dichotomous variables. The resulting sample size allows for comparisons between groups of 8–12 informants with different attributes relevant to experiences of racism. This work led to a new measure of vicarious racism, which we subsequently found to be associated with blood pressure through different biological pathways than for one’s own, direct experience of discrimination (Quinlan et al. 2016).