Market Research Process

Convenience Sample
 
Definition
A convenience sample chooses the individuals that are easiest to reach or sampling that is done easy. Convenience sampling does not represent the entire population so it is considered bias. GRAPHIC
Example
Interviewing people at a shopping mall as they walk by. This is easy because you just choose it, without any random mechanism. You just choose the people that walk by you as your standing there. Sometimes the people could ignore you so it all depends what your surveying.
OR
Or if you want to choose 5 people from a class of 50. You could choose : First 5 students who raise their hand. First 5 students in the first row. 5 tallest students .
What is a convenience sample?
A convenience sample is a sample where the patients are selected, in part or in whole, at the convenience of the researcher. The researcher makes no attempt, or only a limited attempt, to insure that this sample is an accurate representation of some larger group or population. The classic example of a convenience sample is standing at a shopping mall and selecting shoppers as they walk by to fill out a survey.
In contrast, a random sample is one where the researcher insures (usually through the use of random numbers applied to a list of the entire population) that each member of that population has an equal probability of being selected. Random samples are an important foundation of Statistics. Almost all of the mathematical theory upon which Statistics are based rely on assumptions which are consistent with a random sample. This theory is inconsistent with data collected from a convenience sample.
In general, the Statistics community frowns on convenience samples. You will often have great difficulty in generalizing the results of a convenience sample to any population that has practical relevance.
Still, convenience samples can provide you with useful information, especially in a pilot study. To interpret the findings from a convenience sample... [continues]

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