UNIT 3:

Principles of Sampling
POPULATION AND SAMPLES •
A.Y 2022-2023
BIOSTATISTICS
BSML-2108
TARGET POPULATION – known as the ideal population
we would like to describe
POPULATION • SAMPLING POPULATION – the population from which a
sample will actually be taken
➢ The set of all objects that possess some common set of
• STUDY UNITS or SAMPLING UNITS – individual elements
characteristics with respect to a research problem
in the population of interest
➢ The hypothetical (and usually) infinite number of
people to whom you wish to generalize. “The purpose of sampling in research to find
representative samples to avoid bias”
Two methods of obtaining information on the population:
WHY WE DO SAMPLING?
CENSUS SAMPLING
The process of obtaining ➢ Difficult to obtain data of the entire population given
Surveying only a sample
information about the
of the whole population to a certain period of time required by the study
population by including
make inference about ➢ Very expensive to study a whole population
every element of the
the population ➢ Some populations especially animals are constantly
population
moving, being born and dying
➢ Some items are destroyed during the process of
SAMPLE obtaining data
➢ Studying an entire population requires highly qualified
➢ Describes those individuals who are in the study expert and staff which may not always be available
➢ A small subset of the population for the study.

EXAMPLE 1: DETERMINING SAMPLE SIZE

A substitute teacher wants to know how students in the
class did on their last test. The teacher asks the 10
students sitting in the front row to state their latest test
score. He concludes from their report that the class did
extremely well.
HOW LARGE SHOULD THE SAMPLE BE?
➢ If repeated samples of the known sampling elements
were taken, then the resulting sampling distribution
would be a normal distribution.

• What is the sample? CENTRAL LIMIT THEOREM

o 10 students sitting in front row
• What’s the population? ➢ States if we draw equally sized samples from a non-
o The class normal distribution, the distribution of the means of
• Identify problems with choosing the sample in the way these samples will still be normal, as long as the
that the teacher did? samples are large enough
o Bias, only the front row was chosen as the Why sample size is complicated?
sample.
✓ Statistical units
EXAMPLE 2: ✓ Practical considerations
A coach is interested in how many cartwheels the Formula for sample size determination differs according to:
average college freshmen at his university can do. 8
volunteers from the freshmen class step forward. After ✓ Type of study design
observing their performance, the coach concludes that ✓ Type of sampling design
college freshmen can do an average of 16 cartwheels in ✓ Type of variable being measured
a row without stopping. ✓ Study objectives
✓ Number of groups being studied and compared
• What is the sample? INFORMATION NEEDED FOR SAMPLE SIZE DETERMINATION
o 8 volunteer freshmen
• What’s the population? • Previous studies/past records
o College freshmen • Values derived from the pre-
• Identify problems with choosing the sample in the way Anticipated value test or pilot phase of the
that the teacher did? of the parameter project
o Bias, kay nag-volunteer man which doesn’t to be estimated in • An expert’s opinion or an
make them represent the whole population – the study educated guess
• Concluding the study in 2
college freshmen
parts

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 • Level of the parameter
Margin of ➢ p – the (estimated) proportion of the population which
• How the results of the study will
error has the attribute in question
be used
• Available resources ➢ q – is 1-p
➢ Z – the z-value is found in the Z-table
Desired Confidence Level
Degree of Variability

CONFIDENCE INTERVALS

➢ Describe the variability surrounding the sample point

estimate
MODIFICATION FOR COCHRAN FORMULA

➢ Calculation for a smaller population

EXAMPLE:

Sample D of 30 babies born in 2013 had a mean weight

of 7.19lbs with a SD of 1.4, the 95% confidence interval for
the population mean of all babies is:

SAMPLING PROCESS & SAMPLE DESIGNS

SAMPLING PROCESS
MARGIN OF ERROR
Identifying target population
• Look at the research objectives
➢ How close the estimate from your sample should be to
• Consider the appropriate sampling unit
the actual population value • Specify clearly what is excluded
EXAMPLE: • Don’t over define
• Consider convenience
A newspaper recently reported one candidate for mayor ➢ SAMPLING FRAME – collection of the sampling units
was favored with 63% ± 3% of the vote
Determining sample frame
➢ The higher the level of confidence desired, the larger • Does not have to enumerate all population
the sample size members
➢ The more precise the required sample results, the • Subset problems
larger sample size • Superset problems
• Intersection problems
HOW TO COMPUTE FOR SAMPLE SIZE Selecting a Sample Procedure
• Non-probability vs Probability sampling
SLOVEN’S/SLOVIN’S FORMULA
NON-PROBABILITY SAMPLING TECHNIQUE
N = population
➢ Refer on the subjective judgment of the researcher
𝑁𝑒 2 = Sampling error/ when selecting units from the population to be
margin of error included in the sample
➢ The reliability of the resulting estimates cannot be
assessed
COCHRAN FORMULA
Judgmental/ Snowball Convenience Quota
Purposive sampling sampling sampling
➢ Used for a very large population
sampling
Where:

➢ e – desired level of precision PROBABILITY SAMPLING TECHNIQUE

(margin of error)
➢ Use random selection (i.e., probabilistic methods) to
help you select units from your sampling frame (i.e.,

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 similar or exactly same as your population) to be
included in your sample
➢ The rules and procedures for selecting the sample and
estimating the parameters are explicitly and rigidly
specified
➢ PROS: This method attempts to overcome the
shortcomings of random sampling by splitting the
population into various distinct segments and
selecting entities from each of them.
➢ CONS: most complex method of sampling

COMPONENTS OF SAMPLING DESIGN EXAMPLE:

Where?
• Area If 38% of the population is college-educated and 62% of
Who? the population have not been to college, then 38% of the
• Sampling units sample is randomly selected from the college-educated
How many? subset of the population and 62% of the sample is
• Sample size randomly selected from the non-college-going
How to select? population. Maintaining the ratios while selecting a
• Procedures to be followed in selecting randomized sample is key to stratified sampling.
elements
When? Comparison of the method of sample selection between
• Time period for the conduct of the survey simple & stratified sampling:
CLASSIFICATION OF SAMPLING METHOD
• N = 800
• N (urban) = 320
• N (rural) = 480
• Sample size: 200
o n (urban) = 80
o n (rural) = 120

SIMPLE RANDOM SAMPLING

➢ WHEN: There is a very large population and it’s difficult

to identify every member of the population
➢ HOW: select n numbers at random between 1 and N
either through lottery method or Excel

➢ PROS: In this technique, each member of the

population has an equal chance of being selected as
subject
➢ CONS: When there are very large populations, it’s
often difficult to identify every member of the
population and the pool of subjects becomes biased

USE CASE:

Want to study and understand the rice consumption

pattern across rural Philippines? While it might not be
possible to cover every household, you could draw
meaningful insights by building your sample from different
districts or villages (depending on the scope)

STRATIFIED SAMPLING

➢ WHEN: You can divide your population into

characteristics of importance for the research
➢ HOW: The population is divided into characteristics of
importance for the research. Then the population is
randomly sampled within each category or stratum

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SYSTEMATIC SAMPLING MULTI-STAGE SAMPLING

➢ WHEN: Your given population is logically homogenous
➢ HOW: In a systematic sample, after you decide the
sample size, arrange the elements of the population in
some order and select terms at regular intervals from
the list
➢ A method of selecting a sample in two or more steps
➢ Population is divided into PSU’s – draw a sample –
draw SSU – and so on..
➢ Dividing the population into a hierarchy of sampling
units corresponding to the different sampling stage

➢ PROS: Simple. The assurance that the population will APPLICATION OF SAMPLING IN HEALTH RESEARCH
be evenly sampled
Sampling of non-human
➢ CONS: inherent periodicity of the list. This can be Sampling of communities
populations
avoided by randomizing the list of your population
entities.

USE CASE:

Suppose a supermarket wants to study buying habits of

their customers. Using systematic sampling, they can
choose every 10th or 15th customer entering the
supermarket and conduct a study on this sample.

CLUSTER SAMPLING

➢ WHEN: Sampling unit consists of more than one

population element
➢ HOW: Each sampling unit is a group or cluster of
population element. A random sample of clusters is
selected and all members of the selected clusters are
interviewed

➢ PROS: Useful when subgroups that are representative

of the whole population can be identified
➢ CONS: Relatively imprecise samples and are difficult to
form heterogenous clusters.

EXAMPLE:

• A researcher wants to survey academic performance

of high school students in Spain
• He can divide the entire population (population of
Spain) into different clusters (cities)
• Then the researcher selects a number of clusters
depending on his research through simple or
systematic random sampling
• Then, from the selected clusters (randomly selected
cities) the researcher can either include all the high
school students as subjects or he can select a number
of subjects from each cluster through simple or
systematic random sampling.

CLUSTER vs STRATIFIED
Cluster Sampling Stratified Random
Elements are Sampling
HETEROGENOUS Elements are
HOMOGENOUS
Clusters are
HOMOGENOUS Clusters/strata are
HETEROGENOUS

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