CMNS 260 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Statistical Inference, Central Limit Theorem, Operational Definition

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Communication
• Course: CMNS 260
• Professor: Frederik Lesage

Document Summary

Part 2: elements of research design (quantitative and qualitative) Introduce concepts of sampling in quantitative and qualitative social research. Discussion of assignment 2 (group work on design of measures for self-administered survey) Sample: a sample is a smaller set of cases a researcher selects from a larger pool and generalizes to the population. When we talk cases we could be talking about any kind of unit of analysis. To ensure a certain level of accuracy and representativity. We can"t go out and study a whole population. We want to infer to that population, even though we know we can"t fully encounter that full population. Population: a population or target population the universe of phenomena we want to study (it can be people, things, practices). Nonrandom sample: a nonrandom sample is a type of sample in which the sampling elements are selected using something other than a mathematically random process.