It is the process of taking any portion of a population or universe as representative of that population or universe.
One of the type of sampling is "Multi-Stage Sampling". Let's see some detail information about this type of sampling.
- In multi-stage sampling the material is regarded as made up of a number of first-stage units each of which is made up of second-stage units, and so on.
- At the first stage of sampling, a number of first-stage units are selected; from each of the selected first-stage units, a number of second-stage units are then selected and so on.
An example of multi-stage sampling is where, firstly, electoral sub-divisions (clusters) are sampled from a city or state. Secondly, blocks of houses are selected from within the electoral sub-divisions and, thirdly, individual houses are selected from within the selected blocks of houses.
- Multi-stage sampling does not require a complete list of members in the target population, which greatly reduces sample preparation cost.
- Multistage sampling can involve more than one method or combined method of sampling, such as simple random, cluster or stratified sampling.
- Multistage sampling uses a hierarchy of sampling units or clusters
- Multi-stage sampling is like cluster sampling, but involves selecting a sample within each chosen cluster, rather than including all units in the cluster.
- Thus, multi-stage sampling involves selecting a sample in at least two stages.
- In the first stage, large groups or clusters are selected. These clusters are designed to contain more population units than are required for the final sample.
- In the second stage, population units are chosen from selected clusters to derive a final sample. If more than two stages are used, the process of choosing population units within clusters continues until the final sample is achieved.
A country may be considered as divided into a number of districts; each district into a number of villages; each village into. a number of farms. In multi-stage sampling a number of districts is selected in the first-stage within each such selected district a number of villages is selected in the second-stage, and from each selected village a number of farms is selected at the third-stage for enquiry. In the case of a crop-cutting investigation, the work may be carried further by the selection of fields from each selected farm and by plots within a field.
- Multi-stage sampling are convenience, economic and efficient.
- The technique is used frequently when a complete list of all members of the population does not exist.
- It can dramatically reduce the cost of field operations.
- Usually more accurate than cluster for same total size.
- The main disadvantage of multi-stage sampling is the same as for cluster sampling.
- Lower accuracy due to higher sampling error.
- Less accurate than SRS (Simple Random Samplig) of same size ·
- Further analysis is difficult.
You are employed by a market research organisation and have been asked to undertake a study across the whole of the British Isles to determine attitudes towards the National Lottery.
What are the possible sampling frames for this study? You have been asked to interview 4,000 people in total. Consider what would happen if you undertook a simple random survey....... Of these 4,000 you might,
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