Sampling

Treadwell, D. (2013). Sampling. In Introducing communication research: Paths of inquiry. (pp. 138-153), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Summary

This chapter discusses various sampling techniques to consider when studying a population.  Because we cannot hope to always study every member of a population, we can take meaningful samples form that population that are representative.  Two types of sampling are discussed in the chapter; probability and nonprobability.  Both are useful for a given situation when considering how the researcher wants to access a population and how they want that population represented.

Experience

I send out a fair amount of surveys at work.  This chapter helped me to think about how I want to engage the population from which I want to gather data.  In particular, this chapter was timely as I was designing a program to engage my organization and it help me choose the right way to sample so could represent my population fairly and minimize the error in my results.

KEYWORDS: sampling, population, probability, nonprobability, convenience, quota, snowball, volunteer, random, stratified, systematic, cluster, sample size