Summary
The episode works through what published saturation figures such as the twelve-interview threshold can support, tracing that figure to the homogeneous sample and backward calculation that produced it and separating code saturation from meaning saturation. Sarah judges an invented study of older adults recruited through seniors' centres and works out that the recruitment channel and a frequency claim limit what the study can conclude. A harder worked example follows an invented saturation curve for family caregivers of people living with dementia, showing how a flat run of interviews from a single recruitment channel can look like saturation under a backward percentage and under the bare numbers of a published stopping rule whose authors required a diverse initial sample for this reason. The hosts also appraise a methods paragraph that labels a quota sample as theoretical sampling, read the seed composition of an invented snowball sample alongside Canada's Engage respondent-driven sampling study, and debate whether saturation should be the standard for qualitative sample size before settling on a shared reporting rule.