Cluster sampling

Cluster sampling is a sampling technique where the entire population is divided

into groups, or cluster. .

Example
 Let’s assume that you want to evaluate the earnings of airport staff in the United States.
 Since the US has about 5,200 airports, a decision is made to classify all 5,200 airports as
clusters.
 Where the employees of each airport represent a cluster.
 You can then use a simple random sampling technique to select 100 airports from your
5,200 clusters.
 The earnings of the employees in those 100 airports will represent the primary data for
your study.

 What you have ultimately done, is to save yourself time from evaluating the earnings of
employees from all 5,200 airports.

 It will also cost you less to travel to all 5,200 airports than the selected 100.
 The downside of this technique, however, is the automatic presence of a higher sampling
error. Also, results may not be a true representation of the entire population.