There are advantages and disadvantages to using different sampling methods in social research. This article describes them.
1. The advantage of the household survey method is that it provides a sample of the entire population of a country or region. Such a survey could be useful if you want to find out what people in the area think, such as getting opinions on an issue to help a politician take a position on a new park bill or park improvements. This type of survey could also be useful for the government to use to find out people’s preferences for a recreational facility for the area, such as whether they would prefer a zoo or nature park and who would be interested in going.
One disadvantage of the household survey is that it is time-consuming and labor-intensive trying to obtain a sample from everyone in the total population. Also, while most organizations conducting national surveys seek to use multi-stage and cluster sampling to make the sample collection process more manageable, there may be problems in doing so. For example, if researchers try to cut costs by interviewing a certain number of people on the street and choosing every nth house, they could make the number of groups too small to include a full range of people in the area. So, too, the researchers might find that people in certain types of households might not want to participate in the survey, most notably those from lower-class households, skewing the sample to have a higher percentage of middle-income and represented people. than its percentage in the population.
2. The advantage of sampling for a site, user or visitor survey is that one can get feedback from a population that is actually using a facility or visiting a site. Another advantage is that randomness can be controlled by having a trained interviewer select the nth person who passes the interviewer or the nth person the interviewer passes after concluding an interview with the previously selected person. This approach can also be adapted for a quota sample, where the interviewer is asked to get the nth person for a number of categories and, as each category is filled, the interviewer stops looking for someone for that category. .
A disadvantage of this approach is that an interviewer may not follow interview selection procedures and may select someone who seems suitable or avoid other types of interviewees that are more difficult to find or interview. Another downside is that the types of people who come at different times of the day can vary, such as having more families with children who come during the day and teens who come to an amusement park at night. As a result, the sampling could become unrepresentative unless a quota sampling approach is weighted or used to balance different types of people. Another downside could be the problem of unresponsiveness, if the people entering or leaving the site do not want to be disturbed: those who enter because they are eager to enjoy the site, and those who leave because they are eager to get home. Yet another disadvantage of using a questionnaire is that many respondents may not complete the questionnaire and those who do may not be representative of the entire group, particularly if there is a high response rate. Also, site staff may not deliver questionnaires carefully, and it can be difficult to supervise these staff as their priority is helping visitors and guests, rather than helping with a survey.
3. The advantage of sampling for a street survey is that it can be good for finding out who is using a particular street, shopping or tourist area, much like a site, user or visitor survey. Such a street survey can be combined with a quota sampling approach to obtain information on different types of users or visitors who come to the site at different times, if the background of the population in the area is known.
However, the downside to a street survey, much like a site, user or visitor survey, is that people on the street may be busy and may not want to take the time to participate in an interview or may not be interested in complete a questionnaire. As a result, the sample will be biased as a result of differences between those who answer or complete a questionnaire and those who do not. Another downside in some areas is the possible danger of stopping and interviewing people on the street. For example, in a downtown area, people may be suspicious of outsiders, thinking that they could be government employees or undercover police officers, so they do not want to answer questions, and there could be a danger to interviewers or distributors. the questions as they may be threatened or attacked. Another disadvantage is that a quota method cannot be used if one does not know the background of the people in the area to establish the quotas. Another downside is that if people don’t want to take the time to answer a survey on the street, very few will respond to a take-home survey and return the survey, so you will have a low response rate. An attempt to conduct an email quota survey has the downside that not only can there be a low response rate, but certain types of people are less likely to use email, such as low-income people. However, weighting is often used with these types of surveys to obtain a sample that corresponds more closely to the percentage of the larger population.
4. The advantage of sampling for a mail survey using regular mailings is that it can be a completely random large survey, as the mail generally reaches all members of the population. However, a downside is that it can be expensive to mail a survey to a large group, especially since postage rates have increased. Another downside is that there is typically a high non-response rate to mailed questionnaires, and those who respond may be different from those who respond. While the cost factor can be substantially reduced with an email survey, the downside to conducting an email survey is that those who have emails or those who are most likely to respond to emails may be different from the one. unresponsive population. as well as the small population that does not have e-mail, generally due to their lower income.