GORAN MUTALIB MOHAMMED MOHAMMED: Y1912.

130130

ANSWERS:

1) Sampling in qualitative research is different from sampling in quantitative research in a

way that qualitative research sampling is used in order to understand what the important
reasons, motivations and opinions are. Also, it just gives an overall insight of the issue or
facilitates to advance a hypothesis for a possible quantitative research. It simply tells you what
is happening in order to understand the problem. Furthermore, qualitative research usually
uses non-probability sampling because it doesn’t want to employ statistical numbers.
However, sampling in quantitative research is used in order to measure or quantify the
issue/problem by using date which can be changed to statistical and numerical analysis.
Moreover, it is used to quantify the behaviors, attitudes, reasons, motivations and opinions so
as to generalize the results from the bigger sampling population.

2) The population of Ralph’s quantitative study is the U.S. bank customers. In addition, as we
know that population refers to the whole group of people, events or things that the researcher
wishes to investigate. In our case, Ralph wanted to do a field study with minimal research
interference. He made a questionnaire and he decided to send it everyone in his mail
directory. Those who were in his mail directory were: his friends, family, members of the
Golden Gate Park tennis club and the Phi Rho Omega Marketing Students association, and the
staff of Da Paolo, a small Italian restaurant. His mail directory includes a total number of 254
people.

3) Yes, he is using a sampling frame. A sampling frame is a listing of all the elements in the
population from which the sample is drawn. Ralph sent a questionnaire to his entire mail
directory (his sampling frame).

4a) the proposed sampling method is subject to coverage error because coverage error occurs
when the sampling frame does not exactly match the target population. As we know from the
case that Ralph’s mail directory has a total number of 254 people. It is clear that these 254
people does not equal the population (U.S bank customers). As a result, Ralph’s sampling
method has a gigantic coverage error.

4b) yes, I think the coverage error is problematic in this case because it is very big. However,
sometimes the researcher may find the coverage error but does not care about it because the
difference between the target population and the sampling frame is too small. But in Ralph’s
case the coverage error is very big, so it is problematic. If he wants to solve it, he can solve it
by:

1. Redefining the target population in terms of the sampling frame.

2. Screening the respondents with regards to the vital characteristics to make sure that
they fulfil the criteria for the target population.
5) Ralph is putting forward a non-probability sampling technique in his quantitative study.
The specific sampling technique that Ralph used would be convenience sampling because
Ralph is using people that he knows them very well and he is in contact with them every day.
Also, in convenience sampling the most easily accessible members are chosen as a subject. It
is quick and less expensive. However, convenience sampling technique is not generalizable.
Therefore, the data can not be generalizable.

6) Yes, I think that Ralph’s sample is large enough. But as we know that Ralph used his mail
directory which had 254 people but only 109 people answered his questionnaire which cuts
his population size into less than a half. In addition to only half of them answering the
questionnaire, and 12 out of the 109 answers are not useful which also limits his results more.
At the end he is left with only 97 answers. Therefore, he must analyze the collected data of 97
people and make a generalization and a conclusion. All in all, the 97 size of the respondents is
large enough but since it is only people that Ralph knows and 56% of the participants are
customers of banks who come out of the crisis very well, limits making his study random and
generalizable. If he could include other people that he does not know he could have collected
a larger sample size. Thus, if he wanted more precision and confidence, he could increase his
sample size.

7)

How may the fact that 56% of the consumers is a customer of a very responsible bank affect
the validity and/or reliability of the findings of Ralph’s study? Is there anything that Ralph
can do to solve these problems?
If 56% of those studied use banks that came through the crisis quite well; this particular bank
has taken little risks with its customers’ money and has not needed any support from the
government, they will likely have a positive outlook on the banks in the United States unlike
those individuals that were consumers of banks that needed government assistance or lost
money.Ralph can solve this problem by using a larger, more diverse sample. This will provide
information for consumers who were members of banks that were and were not responsible
with their consumers money and provide a more accurate picture of how consumers really
view the banks.