Research Methods PT. 3 Flashcards
Population
the entire set of people and things that you are interested in
- all first year students at unc
Sample
smaller set of people that’s taken from the population
-sample of sophomores from UNC
Census
sample every member of a population
biased sample
not all members of the pop have an equal probability of being included in the study
representative sample
all members of the population have an equal probability/chance of being included in the study sample of first year students from UNC if interested in the population of UNC
ONLY UNBIASED SAMPLES ALLOW US TO MAKE INFERENCES ABOUT THE POPULATION OF INTEREST
When would a sample be biased?
-A researcher’s sample might contain too much from unusual people
Ex: reaching to the bottom of a chip bag and only eating the crumbs
-A sample might only include data from one kind of people
Ex: poll for men and women but they only only sampled men
Ways that a sample could be biased?
Sampling only those who are easy to contact-convenience sampling
May not reflect the entire population,
Psychology, davie hall, get people who are seeing that are coming to davie hall
Self-selection: sampling only those who volunteer
Can cause serious problems for external validity
Because people who are convenient or more willing might have different opinions from those who are less handy and less willing.
Probability sampling
Every member of the pop has an equal chance of being in the study
Simple random sampling: every members name in a pop of interest, in a pool and randomly select a predetermined number of numbers
Systematic sampling:
Roll 2 dice, start at 5th person and then go 3 people over
Cluster sampling
Clusters of participations within a pop of interest and a cluster is randomly selected, all members from cluster are selected
Multistage
Clusters but there is a random number of people from that clusters
Step 1: cluster is chosen, step 2: people form cluster are randomly selected
Stratified Random Sampling
Interest in specific demographic categories
Race gender sexuality and then you randomly select via those categories
Oversampling:
Over Represent one or more groups. More than the actual percentage of people in that pop
Random sampling
Creating a sample using a sort of random method
Increases external validity
random assignment
used only in experimental designs to assign participants to groups at random
Increases internal validity