Sampling Fundamentals 2

Sampling Process Identify Target Population Determine Sampling Frame Select Sampling Procedure Determine Sample Size

Determining Sample Size – Ad Hoc Methods Rule of thumb Each group should have at least 100 respondents Each sub-group should have 20 – 50 respondents Budget constraints The question then is whether the study can be modified or cancelled Comparable studies Find similar studies and use their sample sizes as guides

Factors determining sample size Number of groups and sub-groups in the sample that are to be analyzed Value of the study and accuracy required Cost of generating the sample Variability in the population

Sample size determination In most MR problems we are interested in knowing the mean. (e.g. mean attitude scores, mean sales, etc.). We want an good estimate of the population mean Since the population mean is generally unknown, we must select the sample with care so that the sample mean will be the closest approximation to the population mean

Sample size determination We want a sample that is Selected through random sampling Is as large as possible

1. Normal Distribution The entire area under the curve adds up to 100%

1. Features of normal distributions 68% of responses between  + 1  95% of responses between  + 2  99.99% of responses between  + 3  Bell shaped curve Mean = Median = Mode

2. Sampling distribution of means Distribution of mean responses on an item, from every probability sample taken from the same population, the sample being taken an infinite number of times Smaller sample size = unstable means and greater variability (higher standard error of the mean) and greater sampling error (Recall what is sampling error?) Larger sample sizes = stable means and lower variability (lower standard error of the mean) and smaller sampling error (Recall what is sampling error?) Sampling distribution of means with larger sample sizes give a better approximation to the normal distribution E(X bar) = µ

3. Standard Error of the Mean Standard deviation of the sampling distribution of means sxbar = sx / n I.e. standard error of the mean will equal the standard deviation of the population divided by the square root of the sample size I.e. the greater the n, the smaller the standard error Therefore random sampling with a larger sample size gives a more accurate estimate