1.

8 sampling
participants
LECTURER: DR. KOYAR SHERKO
Sampling participants

 A population is a group of people (or animals) with one or more

characteristics in common.
 For example, the population of a country is all the people who live there.
 The population of internet users who can access the internet.
 A population could also be people who share a particular interest, such as
‘all football supporters’ or who have a particular feature, for example ‘all
left handed people’
Sampling participants
Sampling participants

 The sample, is the group of people who participate in a study.

 They are taken from a population and should ideally be representatives of
that group so that the findings will be representative.
 Details about the sample, such as age, ethnicity and gender, are important
in most investigations because these features affect many psychological
difference.
Sampling participants

 Population: the group, sharing one or more characteristics from

which a sample is drawn.

 Sample: the group of people selected to represent the population in a

study.
Sampling participants

 Other characteristics of the sample, such as socio-economic status,

education, employment, geographical location or occupation may also be
relevant.
 The size of the sample also matters.
 Small samples are less reliable and are likely to be less representative.
 The different sampling techniques produce samples which differ in terms
of how well they represent the population.
Sampling participants

 The extent to which they are representative of the population determines

how effectively generalization can be made.
 Different sampling techniques:

1- opportunity sampling

2- volunteer (self-selected) sampling

3- random sampling
Sampling participants

 Sampling technique: the method used to obtain the participants for a

study from the population.
Sampling participants
 Opportunity sampling:

 Studies are often conducted with the people who

are around at the time.
 Selecting participants in this way is called
opportunity sampling.
 An opportunity sampling is unlikely to represent
the population fairly because readily available
people will tend to be alike so they are unlikely to
include the variety that exists.
Sampling participants

 For example, many studies are conducted using university students as they
are convenient for the researchers.
 However, this means that the sample will be predominantly young, with a
better than average education.
 This means that results may not reflect the scores that people of different
ages or educational opportunities might produce.
 Despite this potential problem, opportunity sampling is the most common
method, even for professional psychologists, as for many investigations
the results are unlikely to be affected by age or education.
 Sampling participants
 Volunteer (self-selected) sampling
 Rather than the researchers choosing individuals , they
may invite people to volunteer to take part in their
study.
 They might put up an advertisement, make an
announcement or post a request on the internet.
 In this way, the people who respond and become
participants choose to do so, i.e. are volunteers, so are
described as a volunteer sample.
Sampling participants
 As the individuals are self-selected that’s they
choose whether to join in, this sampling technique
is unlikely to be representative of the population.
 Volunteers may have more free time than average,
and apart from being willing, often other
characteristics in common, such as being better
educated.
 Nevertheless, it is a useful technique when looking
for participants who are unusual in some way, for
example in Baron-Cohen et al.’s study, where
people on the autistic spectrum were needed.
Sampling participants

 Random sampling:
 Opportunity and volunteer samples may be
biased – they will probably contain very
similar people so are unlikely to include the
spread of characteristics in the population.
 In random sampling each person in the
population has an equal chance of being
chosen so the sample is much more likely to
be representative.
Sampling participants

 Imagine you are looking for a sample of students at your school and you
put an advert for volunteers on the library notice board.
 Students who never go to the library cannot be included so your sample
might be biased towards those who work the hardest.
 Similarly, if you took an opportunity sample from the common room, it
would only include students who are relaxing.
 Now your sample might be biased towards the least hard working.
Sampling participants
 To obtain a representative sample you could
instead use a numbered list of all students and
use a random number generator to choose the
participants.
 This would be a random sample as any
individual is equally likely to be chosen.
 If the population is small, such as all the
members of your class, you can simply give
each person a number, put pieces of paper
with each number in a hat, and raw out
numbers until there are enough for a sample.
Sampling participants

 Opportunity sampling/strengths:

- quicker and easier than other methods as the participants are readily
available

 Opportunity sampling/ weaknesses:

- likely to be non-representative as the variety of people available is likely

to be limited, so they will tend to be similar and the sample could therefore
be biased.
Sampling participants

 Volunteer (self-selected) sampling/strengths

- Relatively easy because the participants come to the researcher.

- They are also likely to be committed, e.g. willing to return for repeat
testing.

 Volunteer (self-selected) sampling/weaknesses

- likely to be non-representative as people who respond to requests may be

similar, e.g. all have free time.
Sampling participants
 Random sampling/strengths:

- likely to be representative as all types of people in the population are

equally likely to be chosen.

 Random sampling/weaknesses:

- in reality everyone may not be equally likely to be chosen, e.g. if they

cannot be accessed (if the original list is incomplete) or if mainly one type
pf participants, e.g. girls, happen to be selected. This is particularly
important if the sample is small.