A college is interested in determining if students prefer online courses or the

Question

A college is interested in determining if students prefer online courses or the traditional classroom setting. Suppose that they approach you and want you to find an answer in which way the students prefer by statiscally using a sample size of 100.

1. IN DETAIL, describe one way you could select a sample using convenience sampling. Explain the pros and cons of this sampling technique.

2. IN DETAIL, describe one way you could select a sample using volunteer response. Explain the pros and cons of this sampling technique.

3. IN DETAIL, describe one way you could select a sample using simple random sampling(SRS). Explain the pros and cons of this sampling technique.

4. What would the margin of error be for each sample.

Explanation / Answer

1. In convenience samples, the population frame becomes the pool of individuals in the sample source, which may not include all segments in the target population or only have a few members of certain segments, depending on how the sample source is built.

Assuming that we are able to pull a representative sample of the target population by whatever affordable means are available to us, we need to give serious consideration to sample size. This is a case where size matters (pun intended). Why?

It is all about precision, tolerance for risk and cost. For samples smaller than 1000, we always have to think about how confident we want to be that estimates are within a particular range (level of confidence and risk), and how small we want that range to be (level of precision). Unfortunately, they go in opposite directions. Higher levels of confidence require greater ranges (margins of error) in small sample sizes.

4. the margin of error be for each sample

we can be 95% confident that the true estimate for a variable in a sample of 100 is within +/-9.8%,

we have to sacrifice certainty and may need to accept a 90% confidence level to get a +/-8.3% margin of error.

At 80% confidence level to get a +/-6.4% margin of error

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