Psychology 2820E Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Simple Random Sample, Convenience Sampling, Sampling Frame

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2820E
• Professor: Riley Hinson

Document Summary

Ideally, the researcher would obtain an unbiased and representative sample. Biased samples: favor the inclusion of participants with certain characteristics (or favor the exclusion of participants) and thus limit the usefulness of the results. If a sample is biased, it cannot be representative. However, even if a sample is selected using an unbiased sampling procedure, it may still not be representative. A representative sample reflects important characteristics of the population in roughly the same proportion as those characteristics appear in the population itself. Some sampling methods require a listing of all the people in the population of interest. May be used with a sampling frame as follows: a random starting point a(cid:374)d (cid:272)o(cid:374)sta(cid:374)t i(cid:374)ter(cid:448)al (cid:271)et(cid:449)ee(cid:374) sele(cid:272)tio(cid:374) is (cid:272)hose(cid:374). You go to the 7th page in the phone book and take the 7th name on that page and then every 7th name thereafter. It is essential that there be no systematic listings in the sample frame.