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A visual representation of the sampling process. In statistics, quality assurance, and survey methodology, sampling is the selection of a subset or a statistical sample (termed sample for short) of individuals from within a statistical population to estimate characteristics of the whole population.
In statistics, a population is a set of similar items or events which is of interest for some question or experiment. [1] [2] A statistical population can be a group of existing objects (e.g. the set of all stars within the Milky Way galaxy) or a hypothetical and potentially infinite group of objects conceived as a generalization from experience (e.g. the set of all possible hands in a game of ...
However, this does not guarantee that a particular sample is a perfect representation of the population. Simple random sampling merely allows one to draw externally valid conclusions about the entire population based on the sample. The concept can be extended when the population is a geographic area. [4] In this case, area sampling frames are ...
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 real-world example of using stratified sampling would be for a political survey. If the respondents needed to reflect the diversity of the population, the researcher would specifically seek to include participants of various minority groups such as race or religion, based on their proportionality to the total population as mentioned above.
An example of cluster sampling is area sampling or geographical cluster sampling.Each cluster is a geographical area in an area sampling frame.Because a geographically dispersed population can be expensive to survey, greater economy than simple random sampling can be achieved by grouping several respondents within a local area into a cluster.
This type of sampling is common in non-probability market research surveys. Convenience Samples: The sample is composed of whatever persons can be most easily accessed to fill out the survey. In non-probability samples the relationship between the target population and the survey sample is immeasurable and potential bias is unknowable.
The sampling starts by selecting an element from the list at random and then every k th element in the frame is selected, where k, is the sampling interval (sometimes known as the skip): this is calculated as: [3] = where n is the sample size, and N is the population size.