Chapter 9

Sampling design
9.1

Learning activity A9.1

Question:
Think of at least three lists you could use in your country as a basis
for sampling. Remember, each list must:
be generally available
be up-to-date
provide a reasonable target group for the people you might wish
to sample.

Solution:
Everyone will be from different countries and I fear this subject
guide writer cannot make a compendium of all possible lists!
However, it is a good idea to think about the following:
Generally available lists include registers of electors, address
codes used by the post office, lists of schools, or companies.
Whether they are up-to-date or not depends on the purpose
for which the list was intended. For example, looking at the
kinds of lists mentioned above you would expect there to be
some government regulation about registering electors (Every
year? Before each national election? What is the policy in your
country?)
For the register of electors, the post office will register new
buildings by postcode on a continuous basis.
For address codes you need to check who would be
responsible for the lists of schools or companies and why
and when they would be updated. Is there a subscription to
pay annually, for example, in order to be a member of a
school or company association, or is there a government
regulation which means that schools or companies must be
registered?
The question of target group also affects the usefulness of
your frame. If you want to know about foreign nationals
resident in your country, then the register of electors is hardly
appropriate, nor will it help you if you are interested primarily
in contacting people under voting age.
The list of new buildings will help you get in touch with people
living in particular areas so you may find you will stratify by the
socio-economic characteristics of the place rather than the people.

Statistics 1 Solutions to learning activities

Schools and companies are fine as a contact for people for many
purposes but the fact that they have been approached through a
particular organisation may affect responses to particular questions.
Would you tell interviewers who contacted you in school time and
had got hold of you through your school that you hate school, or
even about what you do after school? Would you reply to a
postal/mail questionnaire sent via your company if you were asked
how often you took unnecessary sick-leave?
The more you think about all this, the more difficult it can seem! So
think of three lists and then list the ways you could find them useful as
a basis for sampling and the problems you might have in particular
circumstances.


9.2

Learning activity A9.2

Question:
Think of three quota controls you might use to make a quota sample
of shoppers in order to ask them about the average amount of
money they spend on shopping a week. Two will be easy for your
interviewer to identify. How can you help them with the third?

Solution:
The two quota controls which it is relatively easy for your
interviewer to identify are age and gender.
They are also useful controls to use as they help you gain a
representative picture of shopping patterns. We would expect
people to buy different things according to whether they are women
(particular perfumes, for example) or men (special car accessories)
or by age (out-of-season holidays for older people, or pop concert
tickets for the younger) to give trivial examples. And if were wrong,
and older people are into pop concerts of lots of women want to
make their cars more sporty, then we find this out if we have made
sure we have sufficient numbers in each of the controls.
The question of a third control is more tricky. We would like to
know about peoples preferences if they spend more or less money
when they shop, or according to their income group, or depending
on how many people they are shopping for (just themselves, or their
family and their elderly neighbours).
Of course, the interviewer could ask people how much they spent on
shopping last week, or what their family income is, or how many
people they are shopping for. People might reply to the last of these
questions, but may well be unhappy about the other two so you
get a lot of refusals and lose your sample!
Even if they do reply, the interviewer will then have to discard some
of the interviews she has started. If everyone she has interviewed so
far is shopping for themselves, for example, and she has filled her
quota, she will have to ignore the person she has stopped and go to

CHAPTER 9. SAMPLING DESIGN

look for someone else to ask whether they have shopped for others!
If the aim is to interview people who have bought a lot of things at
that time, then the interviewer could wait for people to leave the
store concerned, and stop people who have bought a lot that day, a
medium amount, or a small amount, judging by how full their
shopping trolley is! Or do the same if people are accompanied by
children or not on their shopping expedition.
An alternative is to interview at more than one shopping area and
deliberately go to some shops in rich areas and some in poor areas,
knowing that most of the people you interview will be in an income
category that matches their surroundings.


9.3

Learning activity A9.3

Question:
Find out about one of the Government surveys carried out in your
own country and write down details regarding survey frequency,
sampling frame, type of respondent, location, effective sample size
and response rate.
This should help you understand the problems involved in designing
a useful survey and help you with illustrations for your examination
questions. (Remember that your understanding of the general
points raised here should be illustrated by examples. The examiners
are very happy if you give examples from your own country or area
of interest. They are not looking for points memorised from
textbooks.)

Solution:
Im afraid I really cant help you here! You must do this yourself. If it
is difficult to find out about surveys in your home country, then look
very carefully at Social Trends (given in your reading list) and read
the descriptions of, for example, the General Household Survey
(GHS), the Tourism surveys, and the School leavers surveys. They
should tell you details of:
Sample frame
Respondents
Coverage of the questionnaires
Response rates
General subjects covered
You could also get hold of one of these through your library (the
GHS is a good one) and see the careful explanation of how the
survey works and the things it is used for.


Statistics 1 Solutions to learning activities

9.4

Learning activity A9.4

Question:
Your company has five sites and a mixture of managerial, clerical
and computing, and factory workers. You want to know what kind
of help they would like with their travel to work arrangements. One
of the trade unions involved has asked for free parking for all its
members, another has suggested subsidised train travel cards.
You, as a statistician, have been asked to make a sample survey of
employees to help them decide what to do. You decide to make a
random sample; there is no problem with the list and you have been
asked to give statistically reliable advice. You decide to make a
stratified sample.
a) Give the strata you will use.
b) Explain how they will help you.
Hint: Dont be afraid to use two sets of strata in these circumstances.

Solution:
Useful strata here might be:
The site people might have different travel arrangements
depending on where they work.
Their work type they may have different hours of work
(which would affect their travel possibilities), they may have
different wage levels (which might affect how they travel do
they need car parks?) and what they can afford (would a season
ticket loan help?)
You might also like to consider gender (safety issues, secure
parking?)
These strata will help you to get good overall estimates (because
you reduce the overall standard error by using relevant
stratification). They will also enable you to look at particular groups
and assess their needs (lower paid women, people on a site with no
good public transport, shift workers).


9.5

Learning activity A9.5

Question:
You have been asked to design a random sample in order to study
the way school children learn in your country. Explain the clusters
you might choose, and why.

CHAPTER 9. SAMPLING DESIGN

Solution:
Here an obvious cluster will be the school (some textbooks may
indeed refer to it as the primary sampling unit). This is because a
main influence on how children learn will be the school they are at
you could give yourself an enormous amount of unnecessary
extra work and expense if you choose a sample of 100 children, say,
from 100 different schools you would in fact have to find out
about each of their schools individually. So it makes sense to sample
clusters of schools themselves. For a similar reason, it would be a
good idea to cluster children according to the study group (class) to
which they belong. The only problem with this is that, if you have
too few clusters, it may be difficult to separate the effect of outside
influences (the effect of a particular teacher, for example) as
opposed to the actual teaching methods used.


9.6

Learning activity A9.6

Question:
Your textbook will have a clear and detailed example of a
multi-stage survey.
a) Work through it and then find out about one of the government,
or other large-scale, surveys in your country.
b) Identify the stratification factors and the way in which sampling
units are clustered for convenience.
Make sure you have an example clearly in mind.

Solution:
Work through this carefully and check back to your work for
Learning activity A9.3.


9.7

Learning activity A9.7

Question:
What form of contact might you use for your questionnaire in the
following circumstances:
a) a random sample of school children about their favourite lessons
b) a random sample of households about their expenditure on
non-essential items
c) a quota sample of shoppers about shopping expenditure
d) a random sample of bank employees about how good their
computing facilities are

Statistics 1 Solutions to learning activities

e) a random sample of the general population about whether they

liked yesterdays television programmes.

Solution:
There are no absolute right answers to these you may disagree
with the subject guide suggestions but if you do make sure you can
explain why you think what you do! In addition, the explanation
must use the kinds of arguments given in this chapter.
a) This slightly depends on the age of the children concerned. The
younger the child, the more difficult it will be to elicit a clear written
reply. Telephone is probably not an option (annoying to parents).
On the whole, interviews at school make most sense though we
hope the childrens replies wont be too influenced by their
environment.
b) The items are non-essential we need clear records probably
a diary kept at home (if people will agree to do this) would be best.
Random digit dialling might work but you would need to catch
people while they still remembered their shopping. Interviewing
outside the store is not an option we have been told this is a
random survey so we will need a list of addresses rather than a
quota approach to people as they shop.
c) A quota sample is specified, so a face-to-face interviewer contact
method would be appropriate. Suitable quota controls need to be
provided to the interviewer to carry out the exercise in, say, a
shopping centre.
d) I wonder if email might be a good idea quick and easy. But of
course, if their computer facilities are really poor, we will only get
replies from the employees with state-of-the-art facilities! If the
company is supporting this, you could use any method an
interview might obtain detailed and useful information. If we only
want to know the proportions of employees who have experienced
particular problems with their computers, a mail survey would work
and the response rate should be as good as they are doing it for
their employer!
e) Here time is important mail will be too slow. Even a random
face-to-face survey might take too long you need to catch the
interviewee at home.
So the choice is:
If random, use randomised digital dialling and phone people at
home the day following the TV programmes everyone will
remember them and you can make your questions short and to
the point!
Or you may prefer to use a quota, interview, survey with the
possibility of showing pictures to illustrate your questions and
perhaps ask more detailed questions. You can also do this
straight after the TV programmes go out.


CHAPTER 9. SAMPLING DESIGN

9.8

Learning activity A9.8

Question:
a) Outline the main stages of a random survey. Where do the main
dangers of errors lie?
b) Why might you carry out a quota survey rather than a random
survey?
c) The designing of questionnaires and the training of interviewers
is a waste of money. Discuss.
d) When would you carry out a telephone survey rather than using a
face-to-face interview?
e) You have been asked to survey the interest of a population in a
new type of audiotape. How might you stratify your sample?
Explain.

Solution:
a) The main points you should make are:
Deciding on your target group. Be careful is there something
particular about them (i.e. children who will find writing
difficult, employees who might not feel comfortable to be
interviewed about work at their workplace) which may affect
your next stage?
The sample frame it should be complete (and appropriate to
the target see above), up-to-date, not have duplicates, be
centrally and cheaply available.
Sample design what are your stratification and clustering
factors you want to maximise accuracy for cost with respect
to the variables in which you are interested.
Contact method will you interview face-to-face, use
telephone, mail survey, or email, or what? This may be limited
by your sample frame. You cant ring people up, for example, if
you only have their addresses.
Analysis everything youve learned in the other chapters!
Errors can happen at each stage your frame may not
adequately reflect your target, the clusters in your design may
cause more variability than you expected, people may refuse to
answer, not be at home for interviews, lose your mail
questionnaire, misunderstand your questions or lie, your
analysis may be faulty.
b) You might carry out the quota because:
You have no convenient sample frame.
You are in a hurry.
You are not too concerned at this point about measuring
accuracy you just want to get a rough idea about the problem
you are studying.

Statistics 1 Solutions to learning activities

Money is a little tight and a random sample would cost too

much.
c) Hint you should look at all stages of a survey. How many of
them involve interviewers making complicated surveys? How
important is that? Is it a waste of money? But the kind of
information think about it you can get is really impossible to
get without a trained interviewer. Go into this argument in depth
and think of examples.
d) The following circumstances are worth thinking about:
Am I in a hurry? Do I need a random sample? (i.e. quota wont
do on this occasion)
Will I be able to ask questions without needing to use visual
aids?
e) You need to think about what might affect interest in this new
audio-tape so you can segment the possible market. The
information you have may be limited.
You could look at the figures for the amount of money spent on
electrical goods by sales area, and stratify by area high,
medium and low spend. This would mean that you would be
likely to be able to contact people with different degrees of
interest in your product. This would form a good basis for a
random design.
If you are doing this study for a company that had its customer
sales figures, you could stratify by high, medium and low spend
on appropriate items and sample from your customer base.
If you are intending to make a quota sample, you could still
stratify the areas or shops where you send your interviewers by
using information about the area or customer database (if you
have it) and taking interview points which represent high,
medium and low likely expenditure on appropriate products.

Solutions prepared by Dr James Abdey.