Exercises sampling:

1. You cannot define the sampling frame and decide to refer to non-probability sampling. Which technique do you choose and why? What support do people sleeping rough believe they require from social services? -> snowball sampling as it would be difficult to identify members of the desired population / or self selection (or convenience) Which television advertisements do people remember watching last weekend? -> quota sampling to ensure that the variability in the population as a whole is represented -> within each quotum : e.g. use convencience sampling How do employers opinions vary regarding the impact of EU legislation on employee recruitment?

-> purposive sampling to ensure that the full variety of responses is obtained from a range of respondents from the population (also possible: quota sampling or self-selection) How are manufacturing companies planning to respond to the introduction of road toils?

-> self-selection sampling as it requires people who are interested in the topic (or convenience sampling) Would users of the squash club be prepared to pay a 10% increase in subscriptions to help fund two extra courts (answer needed by tomorrow morning)?

-> convenience sampling owing to the very short timescales available and the need to have at least some idea of members opinions

2. Consider the following (not representative) dataset with regard to firm growth (in terms of employment) among young innovative companies: Company A B C D E F G H Growth percentage +5% +50% -10% 0% +4% +6% -80% +40% Company I J K L M N O Growth percentage -35% +8% -4% 0% -3% +50% +5%

A. Based on purposive sampling: - Select 3 cases for heterogenous sampling? -> e.g. B/G/D - Select 3 cases for typical case sampling? -> e.g. A/E/F (if your typical case relates to moderate growth) - Which cases will you select for homogeneous sampling if you want extremely unsuccessful examples? -> G / I

B. Suppose you want to make a random selection of 5 cases: - What sampling techique will you use? Systematic random sampling: in practice: number cases from 0 to 14 -> divide 15/5 = 3 -> select a random number between 0 and 2 (you can e.g. use the randbetween function in Microsoft excel) -> suppose you have selected number 1 -> than your selection is: cases B E H K -N - Does a random sample make sense? no because not representative

3. You will undertake a data collection for your masterproof (2011-2012) for the village you live in and will interview a sample of people to find out more about their employment (fulltime). Previous research suggests that employment depends on gender, age, and educational level. The national census of population organized in the year 2010 contains a breakdown for the year 2009 of the number of people by gender, age, and educational level (for your village):
Gender Male Age group Educational level Population 20-29 Primary Secundary Higher Primary Secundary Higher Primary Secundary Higher Primary Secundary Higher Primary Secundary Higher Primary Secundary Higher 150 380 134 200 350 120 134 175 107 180 394 125 240 380 97 180 214 65 3625

30-34

45-64

Female

20-29

30-34

45-64

Total

You will use this as your sampling frame. You want sufficient respondents (at least 30) to enable meaningful statistical analyses. You decide not to disaggregate by gender. =>Is the sampling frame suitable? & What sampling technique will you use?

Answer: the sampling frame risks to be not accurate / you will use stratified sampling.

4. You have access to the population of firms. You know that the innovation percentage of firms differs by level of technology in the sector and by firm size. In high-tech sectors, about 70% of large firms are innovative, for small firms it is 30%. The percentages for firms in lowtech sectors are respectively 50% and 15%. Response rate for HT firms is about 50%, for LT firms it is around 40%. The population consists of 5558 firms and is distributed as follows: HT large firms: 54 - HT small firms: 485 LT large firms: 124 LT small firms: 4895 a) Which sampling technique(s) do you propose? Which sample size do you propose if you want 95% confidence interval and 5% accuracy? b) You need to do interviews and only have budget and time for 120 interviews -> you are in a meeting with your boss and he wants an immediate answer: what do you propose (how large is your sample)? What are your arguments? Answer: a) Stratified sampling -> if you have no budget or time limitations for your sample you calculate the optimal number of observations for each stratum: High-tech large firms: n = 70*30*(1.96/5)2 = 323 > correction for small population: 47 and non-respons => 93 => census: 54 Low-tech large firms: n = 50*50*(1.96/5)2 = 385 > correction for small population: 94 and non-respons => 235 => census: 124 High-tech small firms: n = 30*70*(1.96/5)2 = 323 > correction for small population: 194 and non-respons => 388 simple random sample Low-tech small firms: n = 15*85*(1.96/5)2 = 196 > correction for small population: 189 and non-respons => 472 simple random sample

b) Law of large numbers: 30 interviews for each stratum

5. You need to undertake a face-to-face interview survey of managing directors of SMEs in the food industry in The Netherlands (you can suppose there are over 10.000 SMEs). From the data you collect you need to be able to generalise about the attitude of such managing directors to recent changes in government policy towards these firms. Your generalisations need to be accurate to within plus or minus 5%. You want a confidence level of 95%. You have limited resources. a) How many managing directors will you need to interview? b) What sampling technique will you use and how will you take the sample?

a) 385 b) Either cluster or multi-stage sampling: multi stage sampling is likely to be more representative of the total population oving to the possibility of stratifying the samples from subareas.

6. Try these multiple choice questions A Lake Tahoe Community College instructor is interested in the average number of days Lake Tahoe Community College math students are absent from class during a quarter. What is the population she is interested in?

A. All Lake Tahoe Community College students B. All Lake Tahoe Community College English students C. All Lake Tahoe Community College students in her classes D. All Lake Tahoe Community College math students Solution

The instructor takes her sample by gathering data on 5 randomly selected students from each Lake Tahoe Community College math class. The type of sampling she used is

A. Cluster sampling B. Stratified sampling C. Simple random sampling D. Convenience sampling Solution

A study was done to determine the age, number of times per week and the duration (amount of time) of resident use of a local park in San Jose. The first house in the neighbourhood around the park was selected randomly and then every 8th house in the neighbourhood around the park was interviewed. The sampling method was:

A. simple random B. systematic C. stratified D. cluster

Solution