sampling

• quota sampling

  • interviews must question an exact quota of people from categories such as women, teenagers, and elderly
• snowball sampling

  • participants recommend other participants to the researcher
• opportunity sampling

  • the most convenient or suitable persons are picked for the research
• random sampling

  • everybody has an equal chance at being selected regardless of age, race or gender
• systematic sampling

  • choosing randomly from a list of people (e.g. every 5th, 10th or 20th person)
• stratified sampling

  • making the sampling as representative as possible - the sample will be divided into smaller groups, then people are drawn at random from the groups (e.g. age, gender & ethnicity)