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ON
SAMPLING
IN
MARKET SURVEYS 
PHILIP
M.
HAUSER
and
MORRIS
H.
HANSEN
Bureau
o
the Census
EDITOR'SOTE:
The authors wish to
acknowledge
thatthis paper was written at the suggestion
of
Dr. A(fred
N.
Watson, Assistant Manager, of the Research Department
of
the Curtis Publishing Company which has been con-ducting excellent researches with a oiew to improoingmethods
of
sampling.
M
UCH
OF
THE
funded knowledgewhich is converting marketingfrom a loosely practiced art to a modernscience is directly traceable to the resultsof marketing surveys, and such surveysare feasible and practical largely becauseof the availability of methods of sam-pling.Market surveys vary tremendously, ofcourse, in the extent to which they utilizemodern sampling methods. Such surveysare still relatively new and, in conse-quence, the principles of good survey andsampling methods have not always beenassimilated by those who conduct them.Unfortunately, enthusiasm and energyare no adequate substitutes for the sta-tistical and other techniques requisitefor a good survey. Because of the generalimportance of increasing the efficiency ofdistribution in our economy and becauseof the great stakes involved for indi-vidual enterprises, it is important thatthe best that statistical science has tooffer be utilized in the marketing survey.No extended comment will be made inregard to those market surveys which,while they do not cover the entire uni-verse as in complete consumer surveys,do not pretend to use sampling methodsin the selection of respondents. Suffice itto say that such surveys can be of serviceonly through coincidence and that theymay be of considerable disservice to theextent that they give the agency con-ducting the survey and the distributor afalse sense of security which has nosound basis in fact. In this type of sur-vey, it is frequently believed that a largeenough number of cases is an adequatesubstitute for good principles of sampledesign, but experience has well demon-strated (for example, the
Literary Digest
poll) that a "chunk" is not an adequatesubstitute for a sample.It is to the surveys that are makingsome use of sampling methods that thispaper is primarily addressed with thepurpose of directing attention to recentdevelopments which are not yet widelyknown and which hold forth promise forgreat dividends to all sample surveys in-cluding market surveys.The current method, perhaps mostwidely employed in the selection of re-spondents in market surveys and in pollsof opinion, is that of "in ratio" or"quota" sampling. This method of sam-pling has been especially attractive be-cause of the ease with which it can beadministered and because of its apparentsuccess in some of the better known pub-lic opinion polls.The essentials of this method consistin:
(I)
the selection of certain attributesof the population to be used as "con-trols";
(2)
the determination, in ac-cordance with the known, assumed orestimated composition of the populationto be sampled, of the proportion of eachclass or control group of the populationwhich is to be included in the sample; and
(3)
the fixing of quotas for each enumera-tor in such a way that the respondentsselected for interview will include thespecified proportion of each class of thepopulation originally agreed upon.
 
THE
JOURNAL OF MARKETING
In operation the enumerator armedwith his "quotas" sets out to fill his quotaof persons of specified age, sex, color,economic level, education, and so on,and has considerable freedom of selectionof respondents within these categories.Two problems in the application ofthis method may result in more or lessserious biases. The first is in the fixingof the quotas. Data for fixing quotasmust be estimated from previous censusresults and certain current sources.When drastic internal changes are tak-ing place in the economy, as during thedepression of the last decade, or duringthe war now, estimated quotas may beseriously in error. Thus wrong controlsare imposed on the sample, with thepossibility of serious errors resulting.The second problem arises from therisk involved because of the extent towhich the success of the survey dependsupon the enumerator. If the enumeratoris dishonest the results will probably bebad under any sample design (althoughdishonesty can more easily be detected insome designs than others), but even ifwe assume an honest enumerator thequota system of sampling opens the doorto biases of unknown direction and mag-nitude.
It
can generally be assumed thatthe enumerator in filling his quotas willto some extent suit his own convenience,whether consciously or not. As a result,even though the sample contains theproper quotas of each class of the popula-tion, it may contain too many people ofsame nationality, educational level, oravocational interests of the enumerator,and too few third floor apartments, singlefamily dwellings, or multiple workerfami1ies.l
See a paper by Ernest
R.
Hilgard and Stanley
L.
Payne, in the
1944
spring issue of the
Public
Opinion
Zuarterb
on "People hard to find at home: Why call-backs are desirable in sample surveys" in which thenature and magnitude of such biases are measured inone particular survey.
The possible presence of biases is, ofcourse, recognized by many of the per-sons conducting market surveys and thebiases are sometimes reduced to the ex-tent that information is at hand to makethis possible. Even under the best of con-ditions, however, and the best of manage-ment, there is no way of eliminating therisks of serious bias in this type of sam-pling.The results may not be seriouslybiased, but this fact is difficult to estab-lish. In testing the representativeness ofsuch a sample it is possible, of course,not only to check the presence of properproportions of each class of the popula-tion in accordance with the controlitems, but also the presence of othercharacteristics for which information isavailable about the total universe. Forexample,
if
a sample is to be drawn rep-resentative of the city of Chicago, andthe control items used are age, sex, color,and rental level, it may be possible tosee whether households with telephonesare properly represented in the sampleby comparing the results of the selectedrespondents with the known number ofpersons with telephones in the city as awhole. Unfortunately, however, the factthat a sample is representative with re-spect to certain control items does notinsure representativeness with respect tothe items being measured.
A
sample con-taining all the proper control proportionsof the population may nevertheless pro-duce distorted results if it does not con-tain proper proportions of uncontrolledcharacteristics which vitally affect thepresence of the attributes which the sur-vey is designed to ascertain.This may be concretized by a hypo-thetical survey in which it is desired
to
ascertain the reading habits of the popu-lation. Let us assume that in such a sur-vey, age, sex, color, and income level ofthe population have been controlled. The
 
28
respondents selected as the sample mayhave the proper proportions of each age,sex, color, and income group but
if
theyhave an improper representation of edu-cational level, which may well be thecase, the reading habits of the samplemay not at all represent the readinghabits of the universe.
If
we control oneducational levels also, there may still beother points of difference.In light of the limitations and the risksof serious bias in this type of sample de-sign,
it
is certainly to be avoided when-ever better designs are available at areasonable price. It is the purpose of thispaper to point out that better methodsfrequently are available.Methods of sampling may be em-ployed in commercial surveys which arepractical and which provide insuranceagainst the appearance of serious biasesin statistical results obtained throughsampling. The first and usually the bestmethod, when available, is that of work-ing from a complete listing of the namesand locations of the persons, stores, fam-ilies, or other populations that are to besurveyed. This method is frequentlyused where intensive studies are neededof groups already listed as, for example,where an electric light company wantsto make a survey of its
consumer^.^
A more common situation, however, isone where a list of all of the elements inthe universe that are to be sampled isnot available. In such a case, variousmethods have been found feasible andpractical for developing a sample pre-listing, most of which might be classifiedunder the general heading of "area
Verhaps the most extensive use of this method wasin the 1940 Census of Population. See Frederick F.Stephan, W. Edwards Deming, and Morris H. Hansen,"The Sampling Procedure of the 1940 PopulationCensus,"
Journal
of
the American Statistical Association,
vole 35 (1940)s PP. 615-630.
THE JOURNAL OF MARKETING
sampling." The approach in area sam-pling is to subdivide the universe to besampled into a set of small areas. Ordi-narily,
it
is entirely feasible to develop acomplete list of areas, and to obtain asample of areas from this list. Thus, toobtain estimates for a city or metro-politan area, it is possible to obtain listsof city blocks and of similar small areasoutside of cities, and to obtain by fieldcanvass a listing of all dwellings locatedwithin a sample of such areas.Afurthersampling of dwellings from the listings soobtained may be drawn for actual enu-meration. Census data available for cityblocks in cities of 50,ooo or more,3 forcensus enumeration districts, and forminor civil divisions or other small areascan be utilized effectively in designingsuch a sample.If national estimates of specified char-acteristics of the population are desired,
it
is possible to deal with counties, com-binations or parts of counties, or minorcivil divisions as at least a starting pointin the delineation of small areas (areasof this size usually require subsamplingto obtain efficient sample designs).An example of the use of relativelylarge areas with subsampling is affordedby the sample design used by the Bureauof the Census for its monthly report onthe labor force. In this sample, com-binations of counties are used as pri-mary sampling units with area subsam-pling units consisting of blocks in urbanareas and segments of census enumera-tion districts in other areas. This samplemakes use of the fact that when a sub-sampling design is used, there may beconsiderable gain in sampling efficiencyif the units are so defined as to maximizethe heterogeneity of the population with-
a
Available in lists with specified characteristics of thepopulation and of housing, and also shown in maps inSixteenth Census of the United States,
Housing 1940:Supplement to First Series Housing Bulletins
and
Housing 1940: Analytical Maps.
of 00

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