Assignment 4


Sampling Issues

Formulate a research question that lends itself to being investigated through the use of a self-administered questionnaire (not a face-to-face or telephone interview). The research question you choose could be one you formulated for a previous assignment, or an entirely new one. In thinking through how you would go about designing and implementing the survey instrument (questionnaire), please answer the following questions:

1. What is your primary research question?

2. Who should answer the questionnaire? Is a given respondent expected to respond to the questionnaire as an individual, or on behalf of a group of people (such as a household) or an organization (such as a business)?

3 . What are the units of observation?

4. Without actually using a formula to calculate a required sample size, what factors will affect the required size of the sample?

5. What processes would you use to distribute and collect the questionnaires and why?

6. After the deadline for responses to the questionnaire has passed, how can you determine whether or not the people who did respond constitute a representative sample of the people you were initially interested in surveying?

Please limit your work to no more than two typewritten pages.