Calculating the Number of Respondents You Need

The number of respondents you need depends on your survey goals and how confident you
want to be in your results. The more confident you want to be, the less of a margin of error
you should accept.
To calculate the number of respondents you need (known as your sample size), use our
sample size calculator.
TIP! If you need a guaranteed number of respondents, buy survey responses from
SurveyMonkey Audience. You specify the number of responses you need and we'll use
your targeting criteria to find you respondents.
Definitions
To calculate your sample size, you'll need to know the following information:
Population Size
Margin of Error
Confidence Level
Percentage Value
Calculating Sample Size
Calculate the number of respondents you need in seconds using our sample size calculator.
If you’d like to do the sample size calculation by hand, use the following formula:

Statistic Description

N Population Size

e Margin of Error (as a decimal)

z Confidence Level (as a z-score)

p Percentage Value (as a decimal)

Suggested Sample Sizes

Below is a table with suggested population sizes by margin of error at a 95% confidence
level. We used the above formula to calculate the suggested sample sizes. In some cases,
we rounded the sample sizes up to the nearest 5 or 10. For a more exact calculation, use
our sample size calculator.

Population Size Sample Size per Margin of Error

±3% ±5% ±10%

500 345 220 80

1,000 525 285 90

3,000 810 350 100

5,000 910 370 100

10,000 1,000 385 100

100,000+ 1,100 400 100

Example Sample Size

You're sending a survey with a Yes or No question asking if parents of children at your
school are in favor of an extended school day.
The total number of parents (your population size) is 10,000 and you're comfortable with a
±10% margin of error. Using the table above, you can see you'll need at least 100 people to
take your survey.
70% of the 100 parents surveyed answered that they are in favor of an extended school
day. This means you can assume that if all 10,000 parents answered the survey, between
60% to 80% of people would be in favor of an extended school day.
How many people should I ask to take my survey?
Your response rate may affect the number of people you send your survey to. The higher
the response rate, the fewer people you need to ask to take your survey.
For example, if you need 100 respondents and you expect 25% of the people invited to take
your survey will actually respond, then you need to invite 400 people to take your survey.
To calculate the number of people you need to invite to take your survey based on your
expected response rate, use the following equation:
# of respondents you need
x 100
expected % response rate