Exam 5: Sampling and Generalizability

What is availability sampling? In what circumstances is it appropriate for social scientific research? How does availability sampling compromise generalizability? Does the proliferation of availability samples in popular research change the way that social scientific research is conducted or accepted by the general public?

Which of the following is true?

The individual members of the population whose characteristics are to be measured are called the sample.

A researcher studying small town religiosity in the United States randomly selected ten states. From these states, he randomly selected one tenth of all counties. From these counties, he randomly selected one tenth of cities with populations smaller than 10,000. From these towns, he obtained lists of all houses of worship and randomly selected three. From these, he selected ten practitioners to be interviewed. In this example, which is not a cluster?

Which of the following is false about a random probability sample?

When cases are chosen not to represent the population but because of an interesting outcome, we refer to this as sampling the independent variable.

Which of the following is not a common type of non-probability sampling?

Which two sampling methods require that the researcher know something about the salient characteristics of the population (such as race, ethnicity, or gender) before selecting samples?

A researcher conducts a survey of students randomly selected from Introduction to Psychology classes at State University. The researcher then attempts to generalize these findings to all college students. In this example, the target population is:

When magazines and websites create surveys that readers or visitors to the website can choose to complete, what type of sampling method is used?

Use the following to answer questions 16-18: In each set, match a concept from Group A to a definition or example from Group B. -Key Terms Group A 1. Elements 2. Population 3. Sample 4. Sampling frame Group B a. The entire set of individuals or entities to which study findings are to be generalized b. A subset of a population used to study the population as a whole c. The individual members of the population whose characteristics are to be measured d. A list of all elements or other units containing the elements in a population e. Units listed at each stage of a multistage sampling design

A researcher gets a list of all 500 members of Social Club Z that she wants to include in her study. She only has the funding and time to survey 50 members. She takes her list of members, randomly selects a starting point, and then selects every tenth name from the list to be included in her sample. In this example, the sampling interval is:

A target population refers to a set of elements larger than or different from the population sampled and to which the researcher would like to generalize study findings.

A list of registered voters in City X show that 30% of the population is registered Democrat, 50% is registered Republican, and 20% is registered Independent/Other. Which of the following would be closest to a proportionate stratified random sample of 100 voters in City X?

In a census, the probability of selection is always less than 1.0.

Cluster sampling is a form of non-probability sampling.

Florencia asked the registrar at her school to provide a list of all sociology majors. She then selected every fourth name on the list. She used what sampling method?

The ____________ the sample, the more ___________ we can have in the sample's representativeness.

Use the following to answer questions 16-18: In each set, match a concept from Group A to a definition or example from Group B. -Non-Probability Sampling Methods Group A 1. Availability Sampling 2. Purposive Sampling 3. Quota Sampling 4. Snowball Sampling Group B a. A random, multistage sampling procedure b. A procedure that uses accidental or convenience selection techniques c. A procedure that relies on getting information from respondents to find others d. A procedure that requires some prior knowledge of characteristics in the population e. A procedure that considers the knowledge of the informant in the selection process

Periodicity is a source of sampling error in most non-probability sampling.