The PDF Must Die

For the last ten years or so I’ve taken a pretty measured stance on PDFs. Saying that they’re okay in moderation, perhaps even useful.

That’s the stance I take in The Reporting Revolution. I share three reporting strategies and the first is a modern PDF strategy. I kept it in because the book is really about making a transition and I know that most of you are not really ready to give up on the PDF.

But let me be completely honest. I think the PDF must die because it’s holding us back.

Back in 2014, Michael Quinn Patton reached out to me about creating a set of comics he could use in the fourth edition of his Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods textbook. He added a “rumination” before each chapter and wanted a comic to go alongside each.

Number 5 was “Convenience Sampling is NOT Purposeful Sampling.”

He talks about how in a past edition he listed convenience sampling at the very end of a table of sampling strategies as the approach with the poorest rationale and lowest credibility. But when reviewing research publications and reports he would see methods sections that would state convenience sampling as “Patton’s purposeful sampling approach #15.”

I think PDFs are a bad habit we need to break. Like smoking and fast food. A single cigarette will probably not kill you and neither will a single big mac. And while a PDF isn’t really a bad secondary reporting tool, it’s way overused.

But I’m going to do more than just make the statement, in the next few months I’m going to systematically show you the reasons why I think…THE PDF MUST DIE.