PSYB01H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Sampling Frame, Statistic, Cluster Sampling
Document Summary
There is a survey about happiness in the beginning of the chapter. Researchers are concerned with sampling - the selection of individuals or other entities to represent a larger population of interest. (b/c for example if only study happy people, would give diff results compared to studying only unhappy people) Eliminating need for sampling can be done by conducting a census - research in which info is obtained through the responses that all available members of an entire population give to questions. (this costs lots of $) The distribution of characteristics among the elements of a representative sample is the same of the total population. Random selection of elements maximizes sample representativeness: sampling error: the difference between the characteristics of a sample and the characteristics of the population from which it was selected. Larger sampling error means less representative the sample, thus less generalizable the findings. Random sampling error may or may not result in an unrepresentative sample.
