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The sample size is an important feature of any empirical study in which the goal is to make inferences about a population from a sample. In practice, the sample size used in a study is usually determined based on the cost, time, or convenience of collecting the data, and the need for it to offer sufficient statistical power. In complex studies ...
A random sample can be thought of as a set of objects that are chosen randomly. More formally, it is "a sequence of independent, identically distributed (IID) random data points." In other words, the terms random sample and IID are synonymous. In statistics, "random sample" is the typical terminology, but in probability, it is more common to ...
where n is the sample size, and N is the population size. Using this procedure each element in the population has a known and equal probability of selection (also known as epsem). This makes systematic sampling functionally similar to simple random sampling (SRS). However, it is not the same as SRS because not every possible sample of a certain ...
Cluster data describes data where many observations per unit are observed. This could be observing many firms in many states or observing students in many classes. In such cases, the correlation structure is simplified, and one does usually make the assumption that data is correlated within a group/cluster, but independent between groups/clusters.
Data representing each subgroup are taken to be of equal importance if suspected variation among them warrants stratified sampling. If subgroup variances differ significantly and the data needs to be stratified by variance, it is not possible to simultaneously make each subgroup sample size proportional to subgroup size within the total population.
A probability sample is a sample in which every unit in the population has a chance (greater than zero) of being selected in the sample, and this probability can be accurately determined. The combination of these traits makes it possible to produce unbiased estimates of population totals, by weighting sampled units according to their ...
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Its simplicity also makes it relatively easy to interpret data collected in this manner. For these reasons, simple random sampling best suits situations where not much information is available about the population and data collection can be efficiently conducted on randomly distributed items, or where the cost of sampling is small enough to ...