Sample & Sampling techniques

One of the main aims of scientific study is to be able to generalize from examples. A
psychologist might be interested in establishing some quality of all human behaviour, or in the
characteristics of a certain group, such as those with strong self-confidence or those who have
experienced preschool education. In each case, the population is all the existing members of
that group. Since the population itself will normally be too large for each individual within it
to be investigated, we would normally select a sample from it to work with.

Key words:

• Generalizability; how widely findings apply, e.g. to other settings and populations.
• Representative; situations or findings which are typical of another setting or group of
people, such as when an experimental setting is like the real world or the results from
a large sample of participants would generalize to the wider population.
• Population; the group, sharing one or more characteristics, from which a sample is
drawn. It is the entire group that the researcher wants to draw conclusions about.
• Sample; the group of people selected to represent the population in a study. It is the
specific group that the researcher will collect data from. The size of the sample is always
less than the total size of the population.
• Sampling technique; the method used to obtain the participants for a study from the
population.

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Examples of population VS sample;

In research, a population does not always refer to people. It can mean a group containing
elements of anything you want to study, such as objects, events, organizations, countries,
species, organism etc.

Distinguishing between a sample and a population

The term population means all members that meet a set of specifications or a specified criterion.
For example, the population of the United States is defined as all people residing in the United
States. The population of New Orleans means all people living within the city’s limits or
boundary. A population of inanimate objects can also exist, such as all automobiles
manufactured in Michigan in the year 2003. A single member of any given population is
referred to as an element. When only some elements are selected from a population, we refer
to that as a sample

Collecting data from a sample

When your population is large in size, geographically dispersed, or difficult to contact, it’s
necessary to use a sample. With statistical analysis, you can use sample data to make estimates
or test hypotheses about population data.

Example:

You want to study political attitudes in young people. Your population is the 300,000
undergraduate students in the Netherlands. Because it’s not practical to collect data from all of
them, you use a sample of 300 undergraduate volunteers from three Dutch universities who
meet your inclusion criteria. This is the group who will complete your online survey.

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Representative samples

What we need then, are samples representative of the population from which they are drawn.
The target population for each sample is often dictated by the hypothesis under test (i.e what
category/ kind/ type of people you are studying). Example: we might need one sample of men
and one of women; or we may require samples of 8-year old and 12-year old children; or a
group of children who watch more than 20 hours of television a week and one watching less
than five hours.

Within each of these populations, however, how are we to ensure that the individuals we select
will be representative of their category? The simple truth is that a truly representative sample
is an abstract ideal unachievable in practice. The practical goal we can set ourselves is to
remove as much sampling bias as possible.

*Sampling bias occurs when some members of a population are systematically more
likely to be selected in a sample than others. Sampling bias limits the generalizability
of findings because it is a threat to external validity, specifically population validity
(this looks to find whether or not you can accurately generalize research from initial
sample sizes and extrapolate it into groups that contain more individuals).

The sample is the group of people who participate in a study and so are taken from a population
and should ideally be representative. Details about the sample, such as age, ethnicity and
gender, are important in most investigations because these features affect many psychological
differences. Other characteristics of the sample, such as socio-economic status, education,
employment, geographical location or occupation, may also be relevant.

Why do we do sampling?

• Necessity; sometimes it’s simply not possible to study the whole population due to its
size or inaccessibility.
• Practicality; it’s easier and more efficient to collect data from a sample.
• Cost-effectiveness; there are fewer participant, laboratory, equipment, and researcher
costs involved.
• Manageability; storing and running statistical analyses on smaller datasets is easier
and reliable.

Sampling frame and Sample size

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The sampling frame is the actual list of individuals that the sample will be drawn from. Ideally,
it should include the entire target population (and nobody who is NOT part of that population.

Example:

You are doing research on working conditions at a social media marketing company.
Your population is all 1000 employees of the company. Your sampling frame is the
company’s HR database, which lists the names and contact details of every employee.

The sample size is the number of individuals you should include in your sample. This depends
on various factors, including the size and variability of the population and your research design.

Small samples are less reliable and are likely to be less representative.

The different Sampling techniques described below produce samples which differ in terms of
how well they represent the population. The extent to which they are representative of the
population determines how effectively generalisations can be made.

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Sampling techniques:

1) One way to remove sampling bias is to take a truly RANDOM sample since this is
strictly defined as a sample in which every member of the target population has an
equal chance of being included.

Random sampling: This is when all members of the population have the same equal chances
of being the one that is selected.

If no specific type of person (teachers, drug addicts, four-to-five year olds…) is the subject of
research then, technically, a large random sample is the only sure way to acquire a fully
representative sample of the population. Most psychological research, however, does not use
random samples. The common methods are;

- Advertising in local press

- Acquiring people by personal contact, or
- Using students (the most common).

Imagine you are looking for a sample of students at your school and you put an advert for
volunteers on the library notice board. Students who never go to the library cannot be included
so your sample might be biased towards those who work the hardest. Similarly, if you took an

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opportunity sample from the common room, it would only include students who are relaxing,
now your sample might be biased towards the least hard working.

How to sample randomly:

To obtain a representative sample you could use instead a numbered list of all students and use
a random number generator to choose the participants. This would be a random sample as any
individual is equally likely to be chosen. If the population is small, such as all the members of
your class, you can simply give each person a number, put pieces of paper with each number
on in a hat, and draw out numbers until there are enough for the sample.

2) Opportunity sample: involves choosing participants because they are available, e.g.,
university students are selected because they are present at the university where the
research is taking place.

Opportunity sampling technique is used because it is quick, inexpensive and convenient. It is

useful for certain purposes, and they require very little planning. Researchers simply use
participants who are available at the moment.

Examples: in shopping malls or airports, individuals are selected as they pass a certain
location and interviewed concerning issues, candidates, or other matters. Phone surveys
may be based on anyone answering the phone between the hours of 9 A.M. and 5 P.M.
Politicians use convenience sampling to determine the attitudes of those they represent
when they report on the number of letters voluntarily sent to them by their constituents.
Many studies are conducted using university students as they are convenient for the
researchers. However, this means that the sample will be predominantly young, with a

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 better than average education. Observations at airports may overrepresent high-income
groups, whereas observations taken at bus terminals may overrepresent low-income
groups. Surveys taken at a rock concert would likely be different from those taken at a
symphony concert.

The point being made is that: because the population from which the sample came is unknown,
it remains unclear to whom the data can be generalized.

3) Volunteer/ Self-selecting sample: Participants are chosen because they are available
e.g., through advertisements via email or notices. Those who reply become the sample.

Volunteer sampling involves self-selection whereby the participant offers to take part either in
response to an advert or when asked to. Researchers might put up an advertisement, make an
announcement or post a request on the internet. In this way, the people who respond and
become participants choose to do so, i.e., are volunteers, so are described as a volunteer sample.

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Applying your knowledge of sampling techniques to novel research
situations

An early step in any research is to obtain an appropriate sample. The extent to which
generalizations can be made from research depends in part on how representative the sample
is. It is therefore important to get the best possible sample. However, practical constraints
prevent researchers from using random samples most of the time and, for many psychological
phenomena, it is reasonable to believe that processes happen in a fairly universal way so some
sample bias is unproblematic. However, to assume there are no differences in emotional
responses, cognitive processing or behaviour between populations would be misleading.
Indeed, the psychology of individual differences, of developmental psychology and cross-
cultural research are three areas specifically devoted to the study of such differences. It is
therefore important that you can recognize limitations in the sampling technique used. This
means that you should be able to identify possible differences between individuals or groups
that might matter for the particular phenomena being explored in a study. Imagine two
researchers at different universities are both studying obedience and both want samples from
people nearby but not students. One university is near a police college and the other is next to
a hospital and the researchers both obtain opportunity samples with the same age and gender
spreads from these workplaces. Even though the samples are similar in age and gender, the
difference in occupations may mean that the results of their studies will be different – because
police officers tend to be more obedient than nurses.

You will need to be able to explain how you would use each sampling technique and to explain
reasons for choosing each technique. For example, why it might be difficult to use a technique
in practice or why generalizations could or could not be made from the sample obtained.

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