Ch 11- Sampling Design

Vocabulary:
• Population: the entire group of individuals that we want information about

• Census: a complete count of the population

• Sample: A part of the population that we actually examine in order to gather information (Use sample to
generalize to population)

• Sampling Design: refers to the method used to choose the sample from the population

• Sampling Frame: a list of every individual in the population

• Bias: Anything that causes the data to be wrong! It might be attributed to the researchers, the respondent, or to
the sampling method!

Types of Samples

Judgmental Sample: Selecting a sample based on who you think should be included. (Not a good sampling design)

Convenience Sample: Selecting a sample that is easy to get. (Not a good sampling design)

Simple Random Sample(SRS)- every possible sample of size n has an equal chance of being selected
Advantages: Unbiased and Easy
Disadvantages: Sample may not be representative of the entire population. May be difficult for large population.

Systematic Random Sample- Selects every ith item of the population (randomly select where to begin)
Advantages: Ensure that the sample is distributed across population
Disadvantages: May be affected by trends and cycles

Cluster Sample- Usually based upon location, randomly pick a location & sample all there. Population is broken into
subgroups that are small images of the target population and everyone in the selected subgroups is sampled.
Advantages: Cost is reduced because you are only sampling a few groups
Disadvantages: Clusters may not be representative of population

Stratified Random Sample- population is divided into homogeneous groups called strata, SRS’s are pulled from each
strata
Advantages: Cost reduced if strata already exists, All of the population is represented
Disadvantages: Difficult to do if you must divide stratum

Multi-Stage Random Sample- select successively smaller groups within the population in stages, SRS used at each stage

Sources of bias:

1. Voluntary response: People choose to respond, usually only people with very strong opinions respond.

2. Undercoverage: some groups of population are left out of the sampling process

3. Nonresponse: occurs when an individual chosen for the sample can’t be contacted or refuses to cooperate

4. Response bias: occurs when the behavior of respondent or interviewer causes bias in the sample. Anything in
a survey design that influences responses falls under response bias.

5. Wording bias: wording can influence the answers that are given

6. Convenience sample: Ask people who are easy to ask

 Identify the type of sampling used in each example.

1. A researcher randomly selects 8 schools from one school district with 38 schools and interviews all the teachers at each
of the 8. (Cluster Sampling)

2. At a college there are 120 freshmen, 90 sophomores, 110 juniors, and 80 seniors. A school administrator selects a
random sample of 12 of the freshmen, a random sample of 9 of the sophomores, a random sample of 3.
11 of the juniors, and a random sample of 8 of the seniors. She then interviews all the students selected. (Stratified
Sampling)

3. At the local college a survey was being done on whether the students liked the cafeteria food. The survey was in the
college newspaper and was to be filled out and sent to the editing office. (Voluntary Response Sampling)

4. At the end of each semester a local college requires a teacher's evaluation. An evaluation survey is given to all students
to fill out. (“Attempted” Census)

5. During a weekend, a reporter who manages many apartment buildings, interviews almost everyone in his building. The
reporter finds that everyone, including himself, is satisfied with the conditions with the apartment building.
(Convenience sampling)

6. A new clothing store in town emphasizing mainly children clothing. Before opening, management had to decide
whether to only carry either men's, women's, boys', girls', or infants' clothing. After performing representative sampling
of potential customers from each of these groups, it was decided to carry only children’s clothing. (Stratified sampling)

7. The human resources department of a large firm is behind schedule in sampling the job satisfaction of the company's
employees. In an effort to catch-up, the HR manager quickly goes down an alphabetical list of employees and e-mails a
survey to every tenth employee. (Systematic sampling)

8. The human resources department of a large firm is behind schedule in sampling the job satisfaction of the company's
employees. In an effort to catch-up, the HR manager numbers the alphabetical list of employees and uses a random
number generator to select 20 employees. (Simple Random Sample)

Describe the Bias

the may result from… Voluntary Response, Undercoverage, Nonresponse, Response, or Poor Wording of the
Question

1. Putting an ad in the Pony Express asking students to go to a website and fill out a survey.
(Voluntary Response bias)

2. Asking the first 5 students who enter the classroom. (Convenience sample)

3. Randomly selecting 5 students and asking…“Everyone I have asked just loves AP Stats, you would have to be dumb
not too. How do you feel about Stats? (Poor wording bias)

4. Randomly selecting 5 students who made 5 (100%) on the AP Statistics exam. (Undercoverage Bias)

5. Randomly selecting Statistics students from FACEBOOK. (Undercoverage)