sampling

Question 1

it is often impractical to study….

Answer 1

all the members of a research population or target group

Question 2

what is a sample?

Answer 2

a smaller part of the whole research population that the sociologists selects for study

Question 3

to select a sample of the research population the sociologists find or creates a what?

Answer 3

sampling frame

Question 4

what is meant by a sampling frame?

Answer 4

list of all the members of a research population from which a whole group is chosen

Question 5

how can a sample be representative ?

Answer 5

have the same characteristics, in same proportions as wider research population

Question 6

what does it mean if the sample is a representative cross section?

Answer 6

then what is true of the sample if like to be true for the whole group

Question 7

small samples are less like to be representive of what?

Answer 7

large populations

Question 8

why is representativeness important to positivist?

Answer 8

because they want to make generalisations and discover general laws of social behaviour

Question 9

how can researchers not create a representative sample?

Answer 9

a sampling frame that doesnt include all members of the research population

Question 10

what are the types of sampling?

Answer 10

random, systemic, stratified, quota

Question 11

what happens in random sampling?

Answer 11

every member of sampling frames an equal chance of being selected

Question 12

systemic sampling

Answer 12

structured - every nth person is a sampling frame

Question 13

quota sampling

Answer 13

population is stratified - then each research is given a quota e.g. 10 women 10 men over 60

Question 14

stratified sampling

Answer 14

breaks down the population by age, class, gender etc - sample is created from same proportions