1.14 Exercises

These questions will form part of this topic's computer lab.

Exercise 1.1 Suppose a researcher needs a sample of customers who shop at a large, local shopping centre to complete a survey.

  1. The researcher stations themselves outside the supermarket at the shopping centre one morning, and approaches every 10th person who walks past. What is the sampling method?
  2. The researcher waits at the main entrance for 30 minutes at 8am every morning for a week, and approaches every 5th person. What is the sampling method?
  3. The researcher leaves a pile of survey forms at an unattended booth in the shopping centre, and a locked barrell in which to place completed surveys. What is the sampling method?
  4. The researcher goes to the shopping centre every day for two weeks, at a different time and location each day, and approaches someone every 15 minutes. What is the sampling method?
  5. Which would the best sampling method?
  6. Which (if any) of the methods produce a random sample?

Exercise 1.2 A study (Ridgewell, Sipe, and Buchanan 2009) investigated how children in Brisbane travel to state schools. Suppose researchers randomly sampled four schools from a list of Brisbane state schools, and invited every family at each of those four schools to complete a survey.

What type of sampling method is this?

References

Ridgewell, Claire, Neil Sipe, and Nick Buchanan. 2009. “School Travel Modes: Factors Influencing Parental Choice in Four Brisbane Schools.” Urban Policy and Research 27 (1): 43–57.
This material was written by Peter K. Dunn and adapted by Amanda J. Shaker. Unless otherwise stated, material within this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike License CC BY-NC-SA