Last post??? Naaaaah!

Hello girls,

I know this feedback is coming really late and I don’t know whether it will be of any importance this semester, but it will definitely help you for the next semester. The feedback I’m including is general and is meant for everyone. If I manage to write feedback to each and every one of you I will, but till then this feedback should clear misconceptions.

First a general misconception needs to be cleared. Many of you have thought of purposive sampling and convenience sampling to be synonymous which they’re not. They are two different types of sampling methods under the non-probability sampling method as discussed in an earlier post.
It should be noted that convenience sampling is purely on the basis of the convenience of the researcher. Because he/she finds it convenient to access the sample, or any other reason of convenience the sample is selected.
Whereas purposive sampling would be done based on pre-decided purpose of the researcher. E.g. If the researcher decides to carry out a study on work patterns of night shift workers, then s/he will select night shift workers because the study itself demands that the sample be a night shift working population. Hence the name purposive.

Most of you have answered almost all true or false questions correctly except for one:

Cluster sampling guarantees generalizability to the wider population – answer = false
Even though Cluster sampling is a type of probability sampling it does not guarantee generalizability to the wider population because of its nature.
Since only clusters of a certain kind are chosen the results of the study would be genralisable only to individuals having similar characteristics. Also as different clusters are chosen it becomes imperative that the characteristics of all these clusters remain similar. Otherwise it might give rise to sampling error (difference in expected and calculated values of standard deviation). If this sampling error is not decreased then the results yielded may become less and less genralisable to the population

Coming to the last question in the post test, I needed your suggestions on the situation with respect to the criteria of sampling design.
Considering the example in the post test; the suggestions could have been:

1. She should first decide what the goal of her study is going to be. Whether it is going to be a study on part time working professionals from the whole of Mumbai or just a selected area like her building. She should try to align her goal and with what she is actually doing. Maybe types of sampling could be suggested here which she could proceed with, which some of you have done.
2. She should try to make her sample measurable. Depending on which type she chooses, the researcher must pay attention to achieving representative ness in her sample at every step. This again depends on the type of sampling chosen by the researcher. For this reason she should try and stick to the probability types of sampling as the non-probability types would not give her a representative sample. Simple random sampling would be the best choice to bring in representative ness but choosing this type may interfere with the practicality of the study or the economy of it. Thus she needs to decide the priority of her study considering the limitations she may face.
3. She should also think about the practicality issues of this study. Since the sample participants are working as well as studying there might be a problem with accessing them or communicating with them. The researcher should take note of it and as one of you has said negotiate the time that both the researcher as well as the participants could be available for communication. Thus problems like these should be foreseen by the researcher and ways to tackle them should be devised.
4. The researcher should also look at the economy aspect of her study. Making telephonic interviews with participants may require the researcher to invest more time on her part. It may also prove to be costly as opposed to printed questionnaires. If the sample that the researcher has chosen is spread over a large area, then she could take help of assistants to collect data for her, but again the need for these assistants should be justified.

The above answer is only my interpretation; I did not expect your answers to be exactly like this but somewhat along these lines. Considering the different criteria of sampling design, weighing one against another and thus making suggestions to the researcher is what I had expected.

The general performance is satisfactory, but I know you girls are capable of doing much better than this. If anyone has any extra information which would contradict something that I have given above you are free to discuss it with me, u know what to do for that. Just post a comment on my doubts section or better still write a post on your own.

Let’s not allow our blogs to stop because of stagnation. I am sure all of you have a lot to offer. Posting on your blogs does not mean it has to be related only to sampling it can be related to anything else but make sure it makes sense ;)

Cya then, I hope I have been able to make the interaction over blogs as helpful as I could (though I expected more of myself). Still I tried my best.

Regards,
Hemangi :-)

Lets take a look at what we learnt....

Hey girls,

By now all of you must have gotten the news of post test on monday, here's a bulletted list of what all we could achieve in this blogging activity:

1. Concept of population and sample

2. Representativeness of a of sample

3. Accessibility of a sample

4. Criteria of sampling design

5. Sampling types
5.1. Probability Sampling
(difference between random assignment and random selection)
5.1.1 Simple random sampling
5.1.2 Systematic sampling
5.1.3 Stratified sampling
5.1.4 Cluster sampling
5.1.5 Stage sampling
5.1.6 Multi- stage sampling

5.2 Non probability sample
5.2.1 Convenience sampling
5.2.2 Quota sampling
5.2.3 Purposive sampling
5.2.4 Dimensional sampling
5.2.5 Snowball sampling

I hope this list helps you to outline what all we achieved in this blogging activity.

All the best for your test..do well! :)

Hey Girls..

I have commented on all of your posts..
You will find the comments in rply to each of your sampling type posts..that is the post where you wrote about your sampling type..

I hope my replies are helpful..and i also hope that you all will not dissappoint me and reply to any Qs that I have asked..!

Cya then..hope you all are gearing up for your forthcoming post test on the topics we dealt ith on the blog.. :)

My replies to your Posts

Hello girls,

Slow as it has been, I have tried to comment on your posts.

I have done so on your post labled connect. You can read them and reply to me on post labled 'connect'. I will not be able to come online on monday, however I will definitely be online Tuesday onwards.

Cya..!

FInal Step towards Sampling!

Hey everyone!
Pardon me for talking after so long!
I see that most of you have done well. Some of the posts also have good activities in them.
I intend to communicate with each one of you for the type of sampling that you have undertaken.
By this time you must be the master of the type assigned to you…but what about the other types? I'm sure you all must have already seen the other types..for those of you who didn't, don’t worry, your friends must have presented the other types fully equipped with web-resources and activities..so go on have a look..

At the end of it you could draw a concept map of your understanding of this concept. If you could draw it in MS Word and send it to me I’d be happy to receive them!

Cya till then!

(System)atic?

Hey Jailee,
Thought of writing on my own blog to communicate with you, have done the same in your post labled 'connect', doesn't matter whichever you see first..
I was just thinking with respect to the sampling type assigned :) to us!
Does the word 'System' ring a bell?
I hope you'll have time to answer this..

Lets explore types of sampling

Till now we have seen one sub-type of each type of sampling namely, simple random sampling and convenience sampling. You all are now going to venture among all the other types of sampling yourselves….This blogging opportunity will help us all present in a different way and also help the others to know our thought processes while learning.

I have randomly assigned ;) all of you using your roll nos. to the different types of sampling; a list of which is given below:

You don’t have to worry Jailee, you will be working with me for systematic sampling :-)

Resources for this activity:
http://www2.uiah.fi/projects/metodi/152.htm
http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/qmss/samp_type.html
http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~pwhite/SURVEY1/node30.html
http://www.uic.edu/classes/socw/socw560/Sampling1.htm
You could also refer to the book earlier referred to in this blogging activity - “Research Methods in Education” by Louis Cohen which should be available in our library; let me know if it isn't.

To avoid any confusion or delays we will try to stick to the following plan:

• Tuesday-Wednesday =go through the provided resources and discuss about the type of sampling assigned to you. You could discuss it in stages like, what you thought of the sampling before and after going through the resources (I would be glad to know some other stages too!). After you discuss and know enough about your type, you have to find out 2 more web resources for the type assigned to you. So that the presentation of your content becomes interesting you could design some activities or quizzes for the readers.
• Thursday = you could consolidate your findings and content and present it on your own blogs along with the web resources and activities.

So come on now gear up! Lots of work to do!

Meet you on Thursday !

Yes...randomness has types!

As mentioned in the earlier post the 2 examples show us how randomness can be achieved. I had asked for the differences in which the participants were selected. Most of you have written what I expected. The differences are as follows:

1. In example 1, the researcher randomly chooses a sample of 300 teachers from a population of 1000 teachers. This is called random selection. In this case the sample of 300 teachers is representative of the population of 1000 teachers. Thus the results obtained from these participants will be applicable to the larger population (in this case, the population of 1000 teachers). Hereafter the participants are not segregated into different groups. They are treated as one big group i.e. sample which is the requirement of the study. Thus we can say that in random selection the individuals are selected randomly as representing a population. You may have a question as to how these 300 teachers were selected; they can be selected from the many types of probability sampling that you will discover in the next post. In random selection we can be sure that the results will be genralisable to the population.


2. In example 2, the teacher decides to select 50 students and then segregates them in to 2 separate groups required for her study. She gives each of those 50 students an equal chance of being assigned to either one of the groups thereby maintaining the randomness in which the students are grouped. Such kind of random assignment is common in experimental studies. Since in this example, the participants need to be divided into groups for the study, a question arises as to who should go in which group. This question is answered by the method in which the teacher divides the participants into groups. Any other method would have brought in bias and reduced the randomness. This method of achieving randomness is called random assignment.

Thus in this post we’re introduced to 2 methods in which randomness is achieved
· Random selection (if you cannot see the picture clearly, click on it)

· Random assignment (if you cannot see the picture clearly, click on it)

It should however be noted that in random assignment the method in which the intact group (the group of participants that has to be segregated for different treatments) is selected could influence aspects such as generalisability and representativeness towards the larger population. It could happen that the intact group could be selected using random or non-random sampling. Hence if the intact group is selected using random/probability sampling, then the results obtained from the divided groups of participants will be applicable to the population from which it was selected. Otherwise the results will be applicable only to the intact group and not the entire population.

Another aspect of concern in random assignment is that if the number of participants in the intact group is not equal to the number required, then the excess number of individuals are eliminated at random. Meaning, in the 2nd example if the number of students in the teacher’s batch is 55 instead of 50 then 5 students will randomly be selected from those 50 students to be excluded from the study.

IS randomness only of ONE type??

Hello girls!
I’m sorry for the delay that has gone into putting up the posts so far.
Anyway, moving on, in the post named “Random and non-random, that’s it” we saw the 2 broad categories of sampling ‘random/probability sampling’ and ‘non-random/non-probability sampling’.
As opposed to random samples, non-random samples never aim at achieving generalisability or randomness. There are different ways, in which this randomness is achieved. For this, let us take a look at the following examples:

1. A researcher wants to find out the opinion of primary school teachers on the increasing amounts of size and weight of children’s’ schoolbags. She decides to carry out a survey for this purpose. Out of the 1000 primary school teachers in Mumbai, she decides to select 300 teachers randomly for her study.
2. A teacher at a university wants to find out whether there is any difference caused in the academic achievements of students after using 2 different kinds of CAI packages - one with linear interactivity and the other with non-linear interactivity. She decides to carry out the study on her own batch of 50 students. Since there are 2 kinds of CAI packages to be implemented, she makes 2 groups in the following way:
   She lists everyone’s names on chits, and draws one chit out of the lot and writes that name under a column named linear CAI and puts that chit aside. Then she picks another one, this time writing the name under a column named non-linear CAI. She proceeds in this way until all chits have been randomly distributed under the 2 columns and she is ready with 2 groups of students for her study.

By looking at these 2 examples, do you see any difference in the way the participants of the study were selected?
I suggest you write the differences you see in the 2 examples on your own blog. You may copy - paste the examples in your post for your reference.
As usual my post will follow all your posts…See you till then..!

Random and non random …that’s it!!

In the last post, we talked about 2 types of sampling after which you were to find out at least 2 major differences between the two.

My sole purpose for this task was to get you to think in the lines of the 2 broad categories of sampling.

Most of you have reasoned perfectly, saying that “simple random sampling” allows everyone a chance of getting selected whereas “convenient sampling” doesn’t allow an equal chance to every one and is biased, some of you have also said that one is random and the other is non random. Consolidating what all of you have said there were 2 major differences that were found;

• One was the randomness of the sampling techniques - simple random sampling allowed every person in the sampling frame an equal chance of getting selected in the sample, whereas convenience sampling gave an unequal chance to the persons in the sampling frame or rather it did not have a sampling frame to start with. Thus one allowed random sampling whereas the other was non random sampling. On this very basis stand the two broad types of sampling,
  
  
  

  - Random sampling
  
  - Non random sampling

Other names for the 2 are

Probability sampling (Random sampling) – this name because it allows
an equal
probability (chance) to the individuals/items in the sampling
frame. There are
many more sub-types of which we will consider 6, out of the
6 we have already
considered simple random sampling, the others are:

1. Systematic sampling


2. Stratified sampling


3. Cluster sampling


4. Stage sampling


5. Multi- stage sampling

Non probability sampling (Non random sampling) this name because it allows an unequal probability (chance) to the individuals/items in the sampling frame. It also has many sub-types out which we will deal with 5, one of which is convenience sampling. The others are :

1. Quota sampling


2. Purposive sampling


3. Dimensional sampling


4. Snowball sampling

• Other was the generalisability issues of the sampling techniques: this issue stems from the probability of getting selected in the sample. Random sampling allows equal chance or probability to all individuals hence the sample is free of any bias, since it is free from bias it represents the population from which it is selected, and hence the results are generalisable to the sampling frame or population. Non probability sampling on the other hand does not give equal chance of getting selected in the sample to all the individuals in the population; instead it selects the people/items easily accessible to the researcher. Hence there is an element of bias introduced in it, as preference is given to those people who are easily accessible and not to those without easy access. Thus the results of a study involving such a sample will be applicable only to that sample and not the entire population.
  
  Click on the following image to look at what we just discussed in a more visual form:

Let’s get sampling!

In our earlier posts, we looked at what is a sample, why is it required, what is representativeness and accessibility of a sample and what are the criteria of sampling design.
Now we will look at the actual procedure of choosing a sample. While choosing a sample, we have to keep in mind all the things that we learned so far…i.e. the

Representativeness of a sample
Accessibility of a sample
Criteria of a sampling design

Referring to an earlier definition; the process of selecting individuals from a population is called sampling technique/ sampling strategy/ sampling design

We will deal with 2 basic types of sampling today:-
First is
Simple random sampling – this is a technique of sampling that is the easiest and many of us may be practicing it in our daily lives.
Take the example of a simple lucky draw at a program with a live audience. The lucky draw decides who from the audience gets a surprise gift. The names of all the individuals in the audience are written down on chits, collected and a chit from that is picked up by the show host. S/he reads the name on the chit and that person gets the gift! This is exactly what simple random sampling is all about, and this is how it is carried out.
The drawing of the chit done in this case though was to decide who will win the gift, but in sampling it decides who all will be included in the sample.

Suppose if out of a population of 250 students 50 is decided as number of participants in the sample. Then to randomly choose from these 250 a sample of 50 students, a list of all 250 students would have to be made, put on chits referring each one by a unique number or their names, then a name would be drawn which would be noted in a column named sample and that chit would not be placed back with the others. This would have to be repeated 50 times till 50 names are gathered for the sample. The names written down in this column would now be collectively considered as sample. Here;
The 250 individuals / or the list of the population = sampling frame
The 50 names / list of individuals selected from the population = sample
This method is also called as the lottery method. The use of random number table is also made to select the number of individuals required as subjects from the sample. You can visit the following link to read further how to use a random number table.

Take me to the random number table

This type of sampling is characteristic of the fact that it allows every item/individual a chance to be selected in the sample. Thus bringing in the representativeness aspect of sample and that it is selected without bias. The fact that the items/individuals are selected at random or chance shows that the selection was without any bias. And because of all these characteristics, the results obtained from such a sample will be genralisable to the population.
The only disadvantage with this type is that a complete list of all items/individuals within the sampling frame is required which may not be readily available. And incase of larger populations listing every person and then choosing via the lottery method would be too cumbersome. Hence this type maybe suitable to populations which are easy to handle and list.

The second type of sampling we’re going to deal with today is,
Convenience sampling
The name itself says volumes about the type of sampling. It deals with choosing the nearest individuals to serve as sample participants or items, until the desired number is reached. Simply those individuals are chosen who are easily accessible.

A sample selected in such a way however will not be able to give results which will apply to the wider population. Also only those individuals have a chance of getting selected who are easily accessible or come in contact with the researcher ruling out the possibility of others getting selected in the sample. Hence the results of a study using such a sample will be applicable only to that group. Because of the nature of this type it has other names like accidental sampling or opportunity sampling. Such a type of sampling can be used in case study method of research.
After going through these two types of sampling, I have a small task for you:
What you need to do is write down any noticeable differences in the two and write them as a comparison of the two types in the form of a post in your respective blogs.
I want at least two major differences that YOU come out with and not Google ;)
You could put up your posts uptil tomorrow.

Hello from Penang!

Hey girls!!

I just had time to check some of your responses to my last post, I arrived today at around 12:50 p.m. here..the internet access would be a bit of an issue for some days so it might take a while to resume our usual pace of communication.

Till then please bear with me!
cya around! :)

Hello girls
This category of posts is especially with respect to the fact that some of you want to reply or comment on my blog for purposes other than doubts. I had raised this issue in an earlier post named "Let's Talk".
Nevertheless I'm re posting it with a few other requests, I observed that some of you have commented on my blog (be it for answering a question I asked , to appreciate my posts or to inform me about something.) When I had to reply to these comments or had to tell you all that there was a post put up which would solve your concerns, I found it difficult to do so, as I would be confused about which post to comment on. I'm sure some of you would have also faced such a situation in these days.

To solve this problem, I felt that each one of us write a post Labeled Connect, I repeat, Labeled and not titled (this will ensure uniformity in every one's post labels and avoid any confusion while commenting).
You can give a title of your choice to this post. Now you may ask me 'I will label properly and give a title of my own choice but what do I write in this post?

Well that is where your creativity may be put to use. You could in this post,

• put a picture that conveys communication or connection
• write quotes (your own or by great authors! ;)) related to connection or communication
• put up a famous slogan by some Advertising company,

Whatever you do just remember to relate it with our communication or connection, the matter of the post is just to show that this is a post where we can communicate when we don't know where to reach the person or don't know which post to comment on.

Similarly this post itself is also labeled "Connect", so that you can comment on it when your comment doesn't seem to be related to my other posts, or when you are answering a question earlier asked by me.
Just remember, while commenting to this post,

-Give a reference of your comment, e.g. this post is in with reference to your question .......
-Copy & paste the URL concerned, for e.g. if it was a question I asked you, to which you are replying then copy the URL of that page where that question is and paste it along with your comments
-Write what you want to convey....(in simple words, just comment!)

I hope this is isn't too tedious, it will help us to stay organised and give everyone a practice of linking ;-)
PS: I will be removing the above mentioned post titled "Let's talk" in 1 or 2days, as it may confuse us in our communication.

Could you GO Measure Practical Economy?

I hope all the confusion with this post has been removed, I tried my best by commenting on your posts, hope it was helpful and the pictures in the last post sufficed you to write about criteria of sampling design. You girls know quite a bit about Criteria huh!!

Here’s what I think of these pictures and the terms:
1. Goal orientation: the picture shows a purple arrow pointing aimlessly and an orange arrow pointing towards goals. Sampling should not be done aimlessly like the purple arrow but like the orange arrow keeping in mind the goals of the study.

Goal orientation refers to making the sample design based on the goals and objectives of the study. In any study there are

· Tools and methods of data collection
· The expected outcome or hypotheses
· Or there may be a problem whose cause is to be found out.

These aspects have an impact on the selection of the sample. The objective of the study will be achieved only if they are correctly identified and applied to the sample.
· Tools and methods of data collection - In the first case if one thinks of administering an opinionaire then the related sample participants/items should be able to respond to it.

· The expected outcome or hypotheses – if the prediction is that by the use of charts the learners will get better in their visual representation skills, then those participants that are already good in their visual representation skills should not be selected.

· Or there may be a problem whose cause is to be found out – in this case it should be seen to it that the problem is present in the sample participants/items. For eg. If the study is to find out the cause of high dropout rate among rural school students then the participants selected as sample should either be directly/indirectly related to the problem.

2. Measurability

The picture shows a person measuring the length of wood. For a sampling design, this refers to selecting a valid sample that represents the population correctly. Selecting a valid sample means the numbers of participants/items that are selected from the population are enough to represent the entire population and have the necessary characteristics. A valid sample will give correct data, help infer correctly and hence result in conclusions which could be applied to the population. Thus measurability indirectly helps in making valid inferences from the sample which could be applied to the entire population.

3. Practicality
The reason I did not provide a picture for this is that the term itself gives away what this criterion is about. It says that selecting a sample theoretically is one thing but practically applying it is another. This criterion expects us to identify those aspects of a sample that affect its feasibility. Also the possible problems should be identified and solutions for it should be devised. Merging the theoretical and practical sampling design is what this criterion asks us to do.
For e.g. someone maybe interested in finding out the opinion of people on projected keyboards in computer handling, then in that case the people who have seen/used a projected keyboard may be very less or non existent thereby making it practically impossible to carry out the study.
As many of you have pointed out in their post, the issues we saw in accessibility of the sample may also contribute to this criterion.
4. Economy
The 3 pictures for this criterion are apt and say everything without one word being written, the 3rd picture is what must have thrown you off for a while. Let us start in line,

The first picture shows stacks of coins and a piggy bank in the background, which relates to the fact that the expenses for the study should be handled well without wastage. Meaning money should be spent only where it is required.
The next picture again tries to say,

that all activities should be well planned to accommodate the different phases of research and the schedule should be adhered to. Time should be invested only where it is required, i.e. it should be diligently used.
Coming to the 3rd picture,

it may seem a little confusing at first but slowly you begin to understand that some times research may not be dependant only on the researcher alone, there may be assistants to help with different tasks, say data collection, data inference, etc (depending on the magnitude of the research). In some studies statistical analyses may be done by experts and not the researcher. Such help may need to be paid or their time may be at stake. Hence economy also refers to using personnel judiciously, i.e. using only if they’re required as this may affect the other two aspects time and money.
We can say that a sampling design is economical when it balances time, money and personnel efficiently.

It is bound to happen that all these criteria cannot be attained to the optimum. As it may happen that to increase measurability the sample size is increased but that may decrease the economy of the design. Or for practical purposes if the sample was selected differently then it may affect the goal of the study. Thus it may not be always possible to have all criteria fully satisfied; however a balance between the four can be attained.

Everyone's thinking!! (that's nice isn't it??)

Reading all your responses, I'm really glad the way you all have thought about the topic.

I'm sure some of you must have gone as far as reading up something on it, and I appreciate that..but I would only request you one thing, if in this process of blogging activity, you come across resources that will be helpful to all of us and have gone through it, then please do share it with everyone, it will only enrich every one's knowledge :) !

Now coming to the thoughts you all have put up in response to Post 5, I think some of you have misunderstood the question (or may be I did not communicate it well enough..) whatever be the reason I need to clarify the question again,
I had expected you to relate the given pictures and the terms that were above them.
Some of the posts that I read, showed me that pictures were related by some of you with terms that were not above them, which was not what I had expected.

Another clarification I need to make is with respect to the phrase that I had provided you with - "GO Measure Practical Economy" I made this phrase to help you remember what the criteria are i.e. (of course, you are not forced to use this phrase to remember the criteria, you could your own techniques to remember them, infact I'd be happy if someone has any such technique and shares it with the whole group)
GO - Goal Orientation
Measure - Measurability
Practical - Practicality
Economy - Economy
I clarified this as I came across a post saying 'GO Measure Practicality', I do not know whether it was used with the intention of remembering the criteria or as a post title with a difference, if it was the former, then economy is missing and I'd request the author of that post to include economy in the title, but if it was just a post title with a difference then it was a good attempt!

I am also leaving individual comments on each of your posts.
Some members among this group seem like they don't want to give me a chance to comment (just kidding :)) ~! as they have not responded to my posts or questions, but seriously, either they have some constraints due to which they're unable to post anything or the blog URLS that I have got are wrong, whatever the reason I would like to know about their problems as soon as possible so that we can collectively find a solution for it.

I'll be putting up my thoughts about Post 5 soon..!

Criteria of sampling design- GO Measure Practical Economy!

POST 5
You all must be wondering what is “GO Measure Practical Economy!”?
Well they are what we researchers would consider as the criteria for sampling design. Which are as follows:

Goal Orientation

Measurability

Practicality

Economy

Looking at these pictures can you think what could these criteria refer to?

Relate these illustrations to the terms used above them.

In your own blogs, you could write a small post about what you think the criteria of sampling design could be when you look at these illustrations. You could write under four main points as follows:

• Goal Orientation
• Measurability
• Practicality
• Economy

You could write them by 2nd April 12:00 noon.

As usual I'll be putting up my thoughts about this topic by 2nd April, 8pm

Accessibility of a sample

POST 4
First of all let me tell you all what a great job you did on Saturday!! It was worth the wait.. :) And I, in particular, was very happy..!
Ask me why, Cause I saw Gauri and Sneha doing sampling!..right there while they were drawing out chits for the 1 minute games!! :)
We were a population of girls from MET CA - 4 and MET CA - 5 (Whose chits were made) and a selected number of girls (the sample in this case) were required for each 1 min game,
so you resorted to the most basic form of sampling giving every girl a chance of being selected for the games!
But here the sample or the selected individuals were easily available, that is we were right in front of you and had no problems with being associated with the games..but what if this was not the case?

This is when we come to the topic of Accessibility of a sample..... on Friday we talked about Concept of population and sample and on Saturday we discussed what is representativeness of the sample.

As we had discussed, representativeness of a sample is important but so is the accessibility issue related to it. Simply it means that after theoretically looking at the sample i.e. deriving the 'number' of participants in the sample is one thing and actually 'meeting or accessing' the sample is another.

Sometimes this issue may be related to permissions that must be sought from authorities. For e.g. while working with young school students, it is important to take permission from their teachers as well as parents.

But just taking permission is not enough. Accessing the participants should be practicable too.

For e.g. if a researcher wants to find out the effect of busy schedules on the academic achievement of child artistes working in popular serials or movies, then the researcher may get permission, but may not be able to meet the participants as they would be too busy!!

This is just one type of problem in access of a sample, Louis Cohen and Lawrence Manion have written about other such problems about accessibility in their book :Research methods in Education (you may also look for the print copy of this book in our Juhu library).

Meanwhile you can take a look at the online version of this book.
Instructions:

• After going to the following url, you will be directed to a page were you will see the cover of the book in the top left corner
• Below the cover, there is a "preview this book" tab, click on it and you will be directed to the contents of the book.
• After this, you put in the search term "access" in the "search this book" option to your right, many pages will be displayed with the Page nos. click on "more" in that list.
• You need to look at page 98 and page 99
• You may need to sign in with your Google account for you to access the contents of these pages,

URL: http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0415195411&id=5twk1pHwyL8C&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=MMyH8ThQGB&dq=louis+cohen,lawrence+manion,+research+methods+in+education&sig=fCUTrNzKRtbgxZzGqidrmM5g1Pw#PPA98,M1

After going through through this post and Louis Cohen's online reference, I'm sure you all can think of at least 3 examples that a researcher might face in accessing a sample, I request you all to put up your answers (on your respective blogs as posts) before 8 pm. so that we can proceed at a decent pace. See you in the evening~!

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go." ~ Dr Seuss

Representativeness of a sample

POST 3
In the earlier post we said that if a large population is to be considered some individuals from it should be selected that represent the population. How does one achieve that? How do we make sure that the sample we are choosing is representative of the population? This post is going to deal with exactly that – The Representativeness of a sample.

While choosing a sample, it is important that we define the characteristics of the population which should appear in the sample, i.e. we should know what it is that should be represented in the sample.

For example if a person wants to study the opinion of students on the current education system, in this the only characteristic of the population that is observed is that the population is going to be of students, but then selecting the sample becomes very difficult as there are so many students, nothing is specified with respect to their location, level etc, so technically the whole possible population of students existing comes into picture. To avoid such a situation one should try to present relevant characteristics of a population. On the other hand it should also be kept in mind that considering too many characteristics will make choosing a sample difficult as each item in the sample will need to exhibit those characteristics. In this case it could begin by stating characteristics that are going to be dealt with by the researcher, for e.g. the academic level of students, their intelligence level, their location, their gender etc.

As we go on listing the characteristics of the population we should also decide up to what extent the sample must represent the population. It means we need to decide whether all or some of the listed characteristics should appear in the sample. Ideally if all the desired characteristics appear in the sample it would render a highly representative sample. But this may not be possible sometimes due to limited costs or convenience.

Representativeness of a sample has implications on the generalisability of results, because if a sample is not representative of a population, then the results for that sample might not generalise to that population.

Or it could also be said that the results of that sample will be applicable only to that sample and other samples similar to them.

What would the researcher do?

POST 2
I know I know..you all have it figured out by now..now its my turn..

• I agree with almost all of you, according to me for a single researcher, it will be virtually impossible to achieve the objective.
• I think so because the researcher will single handedly have to interact with all the individuals in the population. Moreover a lot of time, money and energy will be required.
• In such a case what the researcher could do is, find out people who can help him/her with the study in different parts of the country. But so many people won't do work for free and may also not have the time, thus if s/he thinks of employing help then they would have to payed for it. But what if the researcher does not have the resources for it? Then what would s/he do?
• The solution of course lies, as some of you stated (you girls are good at this..), in sampling! (finally we come to it!), by sampling we mean s/he would select individuals that represents the population. This makes the population easy to handle and also saves on resources like time, money, energy.

These selected individuals constitute the so often heard sample.
The process of selecting individuals from a population is called sampling technique/ sampling strategy/ sampling design. The following illustration is a simple representation of population and sample.

But conversely it is also true that if the population under consideration is small then there is no point in sampling. So if the population itself is limited to the students of class A in schoolXYZ then there is no need to sample within this lot again.

Here is what Valerie J. Easton and John H. McColl's write about sampling and population in their Statistics Glossary.

Sampling?

POST 1
Since so many days that we have been learning about research we have heard the word “sampling”, “sample” many times. What do these words mean? Why are they so important? Why must sampling be carried out? How can it be carried out? are some of the questions that come to our mind when we hear these words. This blogging experience will help us answer them.
Before we come to how sampling is carried out we need to know what a sample is. The idea of a sample stems from the word population.

Population/Universe – all items in any field of inquiry, Kothari (2005) [see References]

Census inquiry- A complete listing of all items in the population e.g. Population census for a census inquiry it is required that when all items are considered, any possibility of chance or luck is ruled out and hence most accurate results are obtained.

One of the tasks done by the government in a population census is to count the population of India. Here the objective is to count the number of individuals in a nation. Hence listing every individual in a country is possible with the help of large number of people and government support.

• Do you think it will be possible with a single researcher who instead of listing the Indian citizens wants to find their opinion about politicians?
• If your answer is no, why do you think so?
• Could there be a solution to this problem?

While answering these questions keep in mind a person looking to buy a book of 100 stories and browsing through 4 or 5 stories and then buying it. Is there anything similar between the 2 situations? You may write about this on your own blog as a post or comment on this post itself..

Look out for the answers in the next post.

Till then happy thinking… :-)

References :
Kothari (2005) - Kothari C.R., (2005) Research Methodology: Methods and Techniques, Second edition , New Age International Publishers, 4835/24, Ansari Rd., Darya ganj, New Delhi - 110 002 (this book is available in our department library)

Lets talk....

Hello girls

This category of posts is especially with respect to the fact that some of you want to reply or comment on my blog for purposes other than doubts.

While commenting to this post,

-Just give the reference of your comment
-Copy & paste the url concerned, for e.g. if it was a question I asked you to which you are replying then copy the url of that page where that question is and paste it along with your comments

I hope this is isn't too tedious, it will help us to stay organised and give you a practice of linking ;-)

Attention attention!!

I have recently seen that some of you wanted to reply to my quesitons on your personal blogs and hence have done so in my first post.

I felt that his would deviate us from the purpose of the posts related to tasks hence,
in such situations where you all want to contact me and don't know where to categorise it, just comment in my post labled "Contact me".....but rememeber the doubts go in "Doubts"!

Redesigning your blog

Hey everyone, could not publish this post earlier due to technical problems with my PC :(
Anyway this post is with reference to some of your needs to redesign your blog or shifting the page elements of your blog..

So heres how you might go about it...

Step 1 If you are already viewing your blog, click on "Customise" on the top right hand corner of the page. If you are on your dashboard click on "Settings"

Step 2 After the above step you will be directed to the following page

You may directly be sent to the "Template" tab, if not click on "Template" then on 'page elements'. Once you go there, you can see your different page elements in form of boxes.

You can move these boxes as you wish just like we move the tool bars in 'Word', once you move your cursor on the edge of the box, a four edged arrow will appear which will allow you to move the boxes. This way you can reposition the different page elements on your blog.

Now moving on to changing colors and fonts of your blog, there is another tab in "Template" which is "Fonts and Colors", this option lets you choose colors of your choice for your blog.

If you are thinking of changing the blog template all together then there's a bit of coding that you might require to do..for this you may go to the help section of Blogger and find out what you want.

I hope any doubts with respect to moving elements on your blog or changing colors of your blog have been cleared..

Issues with uploading images and content taken from other sites

Hey girls..

I have seen that most of you are coming up with good blogs considering you all are beginners at this..

However there are certain issues we must consider while blogging. Blogs offer us a great opportunity to express ourselves, not only with words but also with images.

This is where the first issue arises, while uploading images from the web we seldom think about copyrights or related aspects.

Anything on this web is the property of someone or the other and we should keep in mind to acknowledge them while using their property.

So as long as you are writing words that are your own you don't have to worry but the moment you think of posting something that interested you on the web exactly like it is, you need to acknowledge the owner for it..same applies to images taken from the web...

So see to it that you all take care of these in future blogging!

For more information on image uploading check out:
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42492&topic=10271

See you all till then..!

Any doubts..?

Hello girls!

I thought blogs being a new tool might give rise to doubts about how to handle a blog and its different features etc. Hence..this post..

Please feel free to write about your doubts in the 'comments' section of this post labeled 'Doubts'.

You can also take help from the 'help' section of Blogger: http://help.blogger.com/ or just click on the 'Help' link given in the top right corner of the page.

Happy blogging :)

C'mon explore your blog..!

Hi there, I think after that initial bump in our blog ride all of us must have revised the process of making a blog :) !!

But seriously, now that we have made our blogs...why not explore them? I felt exploring a blog would be much better rather than teaching the features of a blog. I think writing about yourself will be a good start, just be sure to include it in "About me" where we all can read.

All you have to do is click on this icon which follows the About me title on your main blog page:

It may be any other icon signifying settings, this one's common among them. After you click on it a dialog box will open as follows:

This Dialog box contains a space for 'Description', you may enter information about yourself here in a few lines. After you enter your description don't forget to save the changes you made, or all that effort would be a waste..!

I'm waiting to get to know all of you better..!

Welcome!!

Hello everyone! :)
I welcome you all to my blog. I'm sure by now you all must've created your own blogs..wasn't it interesting? To know that there exists a page somewhere on this internet where you can express yourself..! Thats the true power of the internet.

As you all must be knowing by now I am supposed to discuss (let's not call it teach ..! :)) a topic from your semester 2 syllabus.

Blogs as discussed earlier can give an individual a platform to voice one's thoughts and opinions..but it also can be used as effectively in learning ..be it formal or informal.

You (and me too..) are about to venture into this different way of learning and teaching. As IDs we keep learning (or rather should keep learning) different techniques and tools for learning and teaching, blogs can be considered as one of those tools.

I promise to give you an interesting and well supported blogging experience and thereby a good learning experience.
cya then..

PS: Feel free to comment on this post and write about your experience while making a blog.