Class #8: Questionnaire and Sampling

1. Back to concerns about questionnaires:

• Potential Response Bias – People might tend to answer in a certain way that’ll produce unintended effects.
  • e.g. Social Desirability: In the Burrito Kingdom, every citizen might feel pressured to report that they like burritos.
  • Solutions: Word questions as neutrally as possible; Assure the Ss’ anonymity; Forced-choice approach, items of equal desirability
• Wording – guidelines:
  • Employ objective rather than subjective questions
  • Avoid emotionally charged language
  • Be specific and precise
  • Write the question as simply as possible
  • Avoid difficult words, jargon, phrases
  • Avoid unwarranted assumptions about subjects
  • Conditional Information should precede the question (provide context)
  • No Double Barreled Questions – only ask one questions at a time
  • Choose an appropriate format for your question
  • Pretest your questions

2. Sampling: the process by which a researcher selects participants for a study; how the sample is chosen will determine what can be said about the population
-Sample: A representative group of the population of interest
-Population: Entire group of people interested in studying

3. Probability Sample: the likelihood that any particular individual in the population will be selected for the sample can be identified

4. Representative Sample: we can draw accurate, unbiased estimates of the characteristics of the population 🙂

5. Sampling Error: the extent to which characteristics of individuals selected for the sample differ from those of the population 😦

Error of estimation: indicates the degree to which the data obtained from the sample are expected to deviate from the population
-Effected by: Sample size (the larger, the less error), population size, variance of the data