Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches

QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE SAMPLING

that may make it difficult to understand until

you learn it, so next we will review some of its

vocabulary.

The Language of Probability Sampling. Yo u

draw a sample from a large collection of

cases/units. Each case/unit is your sampling

element. It is the unit of analysis or a case in a

population. It could be a person, a family, a neigh-

borhood, a nation, an organization, a written

document, a symbolic message (television com-

mercial, display of a flag), or a social action (e.g.,

an arrest, a divorce, or a kiss).

The large collection is the population, but

sometimes the word universeis used.To define the

population, you specify the elements and identify

Sampling element The name for a case or single

unit to be sampled.

quota category. For example, we include the first

twenty-five males under age 30 we encounter—

even if all twenty-five are high-income White

lawyers who just returned from a seminar on

financial investments. Nothing prevents us from

sampling only “friendly”-acting people who want

us to pick them.

Probability Sampling Techniques.Probability
sampling is the “gold standard” for creating a rep-
resentative sample. It has a specialized vocabulary

Of 32 adults and children in the street scene, select 10 for the sample:

4 Adult Males 4 Adult Females

1 Male Child 1 Female Child

Note: Shading indicates various skin tones.

FIGURE 1 Quota Sampling