Terms:

• Sampling
o Tool used to learn about a population
o Used even if units are not individuals
o Represents the population
• Population Value
o What % of voters approve of Trump
• Sample Value
o What % of voters in a sample approve of the President
• Margin of error
o Range of values within which the population value is likely to fall
o About 3% for a sample of 1000
o Margin of error is 1 over sqrt(n)
• Challenges for survey sampling
o Drawing an unbiased sample of the population
o Getting people to respond
• Sampling frame
o List from which units are randomly sampled to be included in the survey
• Biased sampling frame
o One in which some members of the population are more likely to be selected than
others
o Volunteer sample
▪ Call-in or website surveys
o Convenience or haphazard sample
o Network sample
▪ Referrals from participants to collect more people for the sample

Biased Samples:

• Generalize only if we have an unbiased sample of that population

Methods to get unbiased sample:

• Simple random sampling

o Every unit has an equal chance of being selected
▪ Start with a list of everyone in the population
▪ Generate the list of random numbers
▪ Select individuals corresponding with random numbers
• Systematic sampling
o Get a list of everyone
o Calculate skip interval
▪ population size/sample size
▪ pick a random number starting point between 1 and skip interval number
▪ every person has an equal chance of being selected
• Stratified random sampling
 o Break population into relevant groups
o Conduct simple random sample among each subgroup
• Challenges
o Costly
o Hard to get a list of all people in the population
• Cluster sampling
o If no list is available or too expensive
o Specify groups of individuals
o Randomly select
o Interview everyone in those groups

1980 Court Case:

• Domino's Pizza vs Domino Sugar

• Sugar
o Sampled 10 cities that did not have Domino's Pizza
o Called people during the day (women at home)
• Domino's Pizza
o Asked people literally in Domino's

Why use?

• Cost
• Hard-to-collect populations
• No theory that indicates that these samples are unbiased
o But better to have biased data than none at all

Types of sampling:

Effectiveness: