Sampling - a lesson

What is Sampling

Q: Explain sampling and its importance in daily life?

Ans: Sample is a collection of few units of a large population which is the total target market. Like for a tooth paste market potential research the population is the all households in the country and sample is few households from selected cities and villages. If the market potential is to assess of a metro city than the whole city will be population and the few selected households are the sample.

The each unit of the population is also regarded as elements of the population.

An ordinary person also uses the sampling method to take decisions and make inferences based on experience of a fraction of such items like developing attitudes about different classes, religions and races of people in everyday activities.

Q: What are the advantages of sampling?

Ans: Followings are the advantages of using sampling over census method for data collection.

1. Lower cost: The cost of collecting data from the whole of the units of the target market or population gets very costly whereas collecting the data from a few units would be comparatively much cheaper.

1. Saves time: the use of sampling technique to collect data is time saving in comparison to total enumeration or census method.
2. Usefulness of units: The small size of the sampling does not affect the average estimation of different features of the total population.
3. Few researchers: Usually the trained and competent researchers are not available in numbers. This problem can be easily avoided by using sampling method for data collection.

Q: What are the limitations of sampling?

Ans: The limitations of sampling method are:

1. Problem of determining sample units: Usually deciding the sample type, method and process is a difficult task.
2. Problem of determining sample size: The researchers find it difficult to determine that what proportion or percentage of population would be sufficient to represent the total population in the research conducted.
3. Problem of executing data collection: The interview and observation methods of data collection are not easy to operate as these require a lot of experience and skills like communication and psychological understanding.
4. Biased ness in selecting sample: Usually the marketers do not make due effort to decide and implement the sampling designs and hence affect the accuracy and reliability of the sample.

Q: Explain sampling process?

Ans: The sampling process involves the following steps:

Step 1. Define the population

The primary step is to define the population in terms of

1. The element- it is a basic unit about which information is to be collected like the elements for marketing research studies are the households, shop, family etc.
2. Units: Units of the population are the elements that are available for selection in some stage of the sampling process.

like the buying behavior of working women in Delhi the units are the female above 20 years of age in all households.

Step 2. Specify sample frame

The sample frame is the list of total population available with the researcher like the employee names and address with the employer, the telephone directory for Delhi residents, the students list available with the university etc. but there are chances that the sample frame has many shortcomings for several reasons. Such sample frame is to be specified for the data collection.

Step 3. Choosing appropriate sampling design

There are several sample designs are available to adopt for processing sampling as guidance and roadmap.

The Appropriate sampling design is chosen among the given sampling designs:

• Probability sampling method and
• Non- Probability Random sampling

Step 4. Determination of sample size

The researchers determine that what proportion or percentage of population would be sufficient to represent the total population in the research conducted.

Step 5. Instrument for selecting actual members of sample.

The different tools, techniques, questionnaires and variables of data collection are planned and organized for finally collection of data.