NOMINAL male, your sample should reflect those

Gender: Male, Female, Other. percentages. Quota sampling is based on the

Hair Color: Brown, Black, Blonde, Red, Other. researcher’s judgment and is considered a non-
Type of living accommodation: House, Apartment, Trailer, probability sampling technique.
Other. 3. Purposive Sampling
Genotype: Bb, bb, BB, bB. Participants are selected according to the
Religious preference: Buddhist, Mormon, Muslim, Jewish, needs of the study (hence the alternate
Christian, Other. name, deliberate sampling); applicants who do not
meet the profile are rejected. For example, you may be
ORDINAL conducting a study on why high school students choose
High school class ranking: 1st, 9th, 87th… community college over university. You might canvas
Socioeconomic status: poor, middle class, rich. high school students and your first question would be
The Likert Scale: strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, “Are you planning to attend college?” People who
strongly agree. answer “No,” would be excluded from the study.
Level of Agreement: yes, maybe, no.
Time of Day: dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, evening, PROBABILITY SAMPLING
night. 1. Random sampling
Political Orientation: left, center, right. a. At a birthday party, teams for a game are
chosen by putting everyone's name into a jar,
INTERVAL and then choosing the names at random for
Celsius Temperature. each team.
Fahrenheit Temperature. b. On an assembly line, each employee is assigned
IQ (intelligence scale) a random number using computer software.
SAT scores. The same software is used periodically to
Time on a clock with hands. choose a number of one of the employees to be
observed to ensure they are employing best
RATIO practices.
Age. c. A restaurant leaves a fishbowl on the counter
Weight. for diners to drop their business cards. Once a
Height. month, a business card is pulled out to award
Sales Figures. one lucky diner with a free meal.
Ruler measurements. d. At a bingo game, balls with every possible
Income earned in a week. number are placed inside a mechanical cage.
Years of education. The caller rotates the cage, tumbling around
Number of children. the balls inside. Then, she selects one of the
balls at random to be called, like B-12 or O-65.
NON –PROBABILITY SAMPLING e. A pharmaceutical company wants to test the
1. Convenience Sampling effectiveness of a new drug. Volunteers are
a. Your workplace assigned randomly to one of two groups. The
b. Your school first group will receive the new drug; the
c. A club you belong to second group will receive a placebo.
d. The local mall. 2. Systematic sampling
2. Quota sampling a. a hypothetical example of systematic sampling,
For example, you could divide assume that in a population of 10,000 people, a
a population by the state they live in, income or statistician selects every 100th person for
sampling. The sampling intervals can also be
education level, or sex. The population is divided
systematic, such as choosing a new sample to
into groups (also called strata) and samples are draw from every 12 hours.
taken from each group to meet a quota. Care is b. As another example, if you wanted to select a
taken to maintain the correct proportions random group of 1,000 people from a
representative of the population. For example, if population of 50,000 using systematic
your population consists of 45% female and 55% sampling, all the potential participants must be
 placed in a list and a starting point would be resting heart rate. The state could divide into
selected. Once the list is formed, every 50th clusters based on counties, then choose
person on the list (starting the count at the counties at random to test.
selected starting point) would be chosen as a
e. A survey assessing customer satisfaction with a
participant, since 50,000/1,000 = 50.
product might establish clusters based on place
c. For example, if the selected starting point was
of purchase, then choose a number of those
20, the 70th person on the list would be chosen
followed by the 120th, and so on. Once the end clusters at random.
of the list was reached and if additional
participants are required, the count loops to
the beginning of the list to finish the count.

3. Stratified sampling
a. A survey about timekeeping might divide the
population by time zone, then take 100 random
samples per zone.
b. A test addressing physical development over
time could use the student body of a school as
a population, stratify it by grade, and then take
random samples from each grade.
c. A study on tax reform might stratify a
population according to income, then take
random samples from each stratum.
d. Opinion surveys on specific political issues
commonly stratify according to respondents'
party affiliation (or lack thereof), then take
samples from each.
e. A market survey by a company interested in
branching into a new market might choose a
population of people using similar products,
stratify it by brand, and sampling from each
stratum
4. Cluster sampling
a. A study in the wake of a natural disaster might
divide a population into clusters according to
region, then choose a random cluster or
clusters to begin establishing the disaster's
overall effect.
b. A company interested in brand penetration
may lack the resources to survey an entire city.
Instead, they could divide the city into clusters
based on area, choose clusters at random, and
test the popularity of their brand. This is also
how some mail campaigns are conducted.
c. A test of the effectiveness of a new curriculum
could begin by dividing an area by school
district, then choosing a school or set number
of schools at random and sampling students
from each.
d. Data relating to universal phenomena is often
obtained by cluster sampling. Take the example
of a statewide survey testing the average