The process of selecting and observing individual units in order to make statistical inferences or make conclusions about the population.
The proportion of subjects in a population selected for analysis is called the sampling fraction.
A study is designed to estimate the prevalence of substance abuse among adults in City A. To obtain a representative sample of adults, iinvetigators used a random number table to identify a random subset of individuals in a list of telephone numbers.
Gliner, J.A. and G.A. Morgan. 2000. Research Methods in Applied Settings, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Last, J. 1983. A Dictionary of Epidemiology, New York, NY: Oxford Medical Publications.
Schutt, R.K. 2006. Investigating the Social World - The Process and Practice of Research, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
|