Markov's Analysis
Chapter 9: Sampling in Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Research
Answers to Review Questions 9-1. What type of sampling produces representative samples?
Random sampling techniques, in particular, equal probability selection methods produce representative samples. 9-2. What is a representative sample, and when is it important to obtain a representative sample?
A representative sample is a sample that resembles the total population. It is important to use a sampling method that produces representative samples when your goal is to understand the characteristics of a population based on study of a sample (i.e., when you want to directly generalize from your sample to your population). 9-3. What is the difference between a statistic and a parameter?
A statistic is a numerical characteristic of a sample. A parameter is a numerical characteristic of a population. 9-4. What is a sampling frame?
It’s the list of all the elements or all the people in a population. Figure 9.2 in your textbook is the one we used in the chapter (which by the way has age and gender included even though that information would not be included in a real sampling frame; we included age and gender so that you could select some samples and then do some calculations on age and gender): Some additional examples of sampling frames are phone books, college student directories, directories of members of an association, a list of all the teachers in your county, etc. Note that some sampling frames are better than others; for example, the phone book excludes many people (that’s why a special technique called random digit dialing is used to obtain telephone samples rather than relying on the phone book). 9-5. How do you select a simple random sample?
There are several ways: the hat model, a computer random number generator, and a table of random numbers. In the lecture and at the end of the chapter (under Relevant Internet Sites) there are links to random number
Answers to Review Questions 9-1. What type of sampling produces representative samples?
Random sampling techniques, in particular, equal probability selection methods produce representative samples. 9-2. What is a representative sample, and when is it important to obtain a representative sample?
A representative sample is a sample that resembles the total population. It is important to use a sampling method that produces representative samples when your goal is to understand the characteristics of a population based on study of a sample (i.e., when you want to directly generalize from your sample to your population). 9-3. What is the difference between a statistic and a parameter?
A statistic is a numerical characteristic of a sample. A parameter is a numerical characteristic of a population. 9-4. What is a sampling frame?
It’s the list of all the elements or all the people in a population. Figure 9.2 in your textbook is the one we used in the chapter (which by the way has age and gender included even though that information would not be included in a real sampling frame; we included age and gender so that you could select some samples and then do some calculations on age and gender): Some additional examples of sampling frames are phone books, college student directories, directories of members of an association, a list of all the teachers in your county, etc. Note that some sampling frames are better than others; for example, the phone book excludes many people (that’s why a special technique called random digit dialing is used to obtain telephone samples rather than relying on the phone book). 9-5. How do you select a simple random sample?
There are several ways: the hat model, a computer random number generator, and a table of random numbers. In the lecture and at the end of the chapter (under Relevant Internet Sites) there are links to random number