3 Research methods
Key terms Social survey The systematic collection of the same type of data from a relatively large number of people. Structured interview A questionnaire read out by the interviewer who also records the answers. Self-completion questionnaire A questionnaire completed by the research participant.
Summary A social survey is usually based on presenting participants with the same questions in the form of a structured interview or a self-completion questionnaire.
3.4.2 Sampling Nearly all social surveys are based on a sample of the population to be investigated. ‘Population’ is the term given to everybody in the group to be studied. The population might be adult males, female pensioners,
manual workers, 16–19-year-old students, parents with dependent children and so on. A sample is a selection of part of the population. Samples are necessary because researchers rarely have the time and money to study everybody in the particular population to be investigated. Most researchers aim to select a sample which is representative of the population to be studied. This means that the sample should have the same characteristics as the population as a whole. Thus, if a researcher is studying the attitudes of British women, the sample should not consist of 1000 nuns, or 1000 women over 80 or 1000 divorced women, since such groups are hardly representative of British women. With a representative sample, generalisations are more likely to be true – findings from the sample are more likely to be applicable to the research population as a whole.
Sample design and composition Sampling unit Who should be included in a sample? In many cases it is fairly easy to define a
Activity
The researcher wants a representative sample of families with dependent children. 1. Why would the researcher want a representative sample? 2. How would the information in the picture help him to obtain one?
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