Selecting Research Participant

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 Sample & Population
• A population is the entire set of individuals of
interest to a researcher.
• A sample is a set of individuals selected from a
population and usually is intended to
represent the population in a research study.

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 Some Terms
• A biased sample is a sample with different
characteristics from those of the population.
• A representative sample is a sample with the
same characteristics as the population.
• Selection bias or sampling bias occurs when
participants or subjects are selected in a
manner that increases the probability of
obtaining a unrepresentative sample.

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 Sample Size
The first principle is that a large sample is
probably more representative than a small
sample.

Although large samples are good, there is also a

practical limit to the number of individuals that
is reasonable to use in a research study.

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 Sample Size
• Although a sample size of 25 or 30 individuals for
each group or each treatment condition is a good
target, other considerations may make this
sample size unreasonably large or small.

• It can be computed that for a population of

100,000 or more the sample must have at least
384 individuals to be confident that the
preferences observed in the sample are within
5% of the corresponding population preferences.
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 Sampling Basics
• Sampling methods fall into two basic
categories:
• probability sampling (5 types)
• nonprobability sampling.(2 types)

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33%White
33%Black
33%Latino

60% White,
10% Black,
30% Latino

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 Random schools

33% available White

33% available Black
33% available Latino

Snowball sampling?

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