What Is Sampling?

Sampling is a process used in statistical analysis in which a predetermined

number of observations are taken from a larger population. The methodology
used to sample from a larger population depends on the type of analysis being
performed, but it may include simple random sampling or systematic sampling.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Certified Public Accountants use sampling during audits to determine the accuracy and
completeness of account balances.
 Types of sampling include random sampling, block sampling, judgement sampling, and
systematic sampling.
 Companies use sampling as a marketing tool to identify the needs and wants of their
target market.
Volume 75%
 

Data Collection

In research, statisticians use data in many different ways.

Data can be used to describe situations.

Data can be collected in a variety of ways,
BUT
if the
sample data is not collected in an appropriate way, the data
may be so completely useless that no amount of statistical
torturing can salvage them.

Basic Methods of Sampling


Random Sampling

Selected by using chance or
random numbers

Each individual subject
(human or otherwise) has
an equal chance of being
selected

Examples:

Drawing names from a hat

Random Numbers
How Sampling is Used
A Certified Public Accountant (CPA) performing a financial audit uses sampling
to determine the accuracy and completeness of account balances in the financial
statements. Sampling performed by an auditor is referred to as "audit sampling."
It is necessary to perform audit sampling when the population, in this case
account transaction information, is large. Additionally, managers within a
company may use customer sampling to assess the demand for new products or
the success of marketing efforts.

The chosen sample should be a fair representation of the entire population.

When taking a sample from a larger population, it is important to consider how
the sample is chosen. To get a representative sample, it must be drawn
randomly and encompass the whole population. For example, a lottery system
could be used to determine the average age of students in a university by
sampling 10% of the student body.

Types of Audit Sampling

Random Sampling
With random sampling, every item within a population has an equal probability of
being chosen. It is the furthest removed from any potential bias because there is
no human judgement involved in selecting the sample. For example, a random
sample may include choosing the names of 25 employees out of a hat in a
company of 250 employees. The population is all 250 employees, and the
sample is random because each employee has an equal chance of being
chosen.

Judgement Sampling
Auditor judgement may be used to select the sample from the full population. An
auditor may only be concerned about transactions of a material nature. For
example, assume the auditor sets the threshold for materiality for accounts
payable transactions at $10,000. If the client provides a complete list of 15
transactions over $10,000, the auditor may just choose to review all transactions
due to the small population size.

Alternatively, an auditor may identify all general ledger accounts with a variance

greater than 10% from the prior period. In this case, the auditor is limiting the
population from which the sample selection is being derived. Unfortunately,
human judgement used in sampling always comes with the potential for bias,
whether explicit or implicit.

Block Sampling
Block sampling takes a consecutive series of items within the population to use
as the sample. For example, a list of all sales transactions in an accounting
period could be sorted in various ways, including by date or by dollar amount. An
auditor may request that the company's accountant provide the list in one format
or the other in order to select a sample from a specific segment of the list. This
method requires very little modification on the auditor's part, but it is likely that a
block of transactions will not be representative of the full population.
Systematic Sampling
Systematic sampling begins at a random starting point within the population and
uses a fixed, periodic interval to select items for a sample. The sampling interval
is calculated as the population size divided by the sample size. Despite the
sample population being selected in advance, systematic sampling is still
considered random if the periodic interval is determined beforehand and the
starting point is random.

Assume that an auditor is reviewing the internal controls related to a company's

cash account and wants to test the company policy that stipulates that checks
exceeding $10,000 must be signed by two people. The population consists of
every company check exceeding $10,000 during the fiscal year, which, in this
example, was 300. The auditor uses probability statistics and determines that the
sample size should be 20% of the population or 60 checks. The sampling interval
is 5 (300 checks / 60 sample checks).

Therefore, the auditor selects every fifth check for testing. Assuming no errors
are found in the sampling test work, the statistical analysis gives the auditor a
95% confidence rate that the check procedure was performed correctly. The
auditor tests the sample of 60 checks and finds no errors, so he concludes that
the internal control over cash is working properly.

Example of Marketing Sampling

Businesses aim to sell their products and/or services to target markets. Before
presenting products to the market, companies generally identify the needs and
wants of their target audience. To do so, they may employ sampling of the target
market population to gain a better understanding of those needs to later create a
product and/or service that meets those needs. In this case, gathering the
opinions of the sample helps to identify the needs of the whole.

SPONSORED

Start with $30 trading bonus

Trade forex and CFDs on stock indices, commodities, stocks, metals and
energies with a licensed and regulated broker. For all clients who open their first
real account, XM offers a $30 trading bonus to test the XM products and services
without any initial deposit needed. Learn more about how you can trade over
1000 instruments on the XM MT4 and MT5 platforms from your PC and Mac, or
from a variety of mobile devices.
 Why Collect Data
Data collection is defined as the “process of gathering and measuring
information on variables of interest, in an established systematic fashion that
enables one to answer queries, stated research questions, test hypotheses,
and evaluate outcomes.”

There are numerous reasons for data collection, but here I’m going to focus
primarily on business and marketing related ones:

 It helps you learn more about your customers

 It enables you to discover trends in the way people change their
opinions and behavior over time or in different circumstances
 It lets you segment your audience into different customer groups and
direct different marketing strategies at each of the groups based on their
individual needs
 It facilitates decision making and improves the quality of decisions made
 It helps resolve issues and improve the quality of your product or
service based on the feedback obtained

Before we dive deeper into different data collection techniques and methods,
let’s just briefly make a difference between the two main types of data –
quantitative and qualitative.

Quantitative vs. Qualitative data

Quantitative Data
This type of data deals with things that are measurable and can be expressed
in numbers or figures, or using other values that express quantity. That being
said, quantitative data is usually expressed in numerical form and can
represent size, length, duration, amount, price, and so on.

Quantitative research is most likely to provide answers to questions such as

who? when? where? what? and how many?

Quantitative survey questions are in most cases closed-ended and created in

accordance with the research goals, thus making the answers easily
transformable into numbers, charts, graphs, and tables.
The data obtained via quantitative data collection methods can be used to test
existing ideas or predictions, learn about your customers, measure general
trends, and make important. For instance, you can use it to measure the
success of your product and which aspects may need improvement, the level
of satisfaction of your customers, to find out whether and why your
competitors are outselling you, and so on.

As quantitative data collection methods are often based on mathematical

calculations, the data obtained that way is usually seen as more objective and
reliable than qualitative. Some of the most common quantitative data
collection techniques include surveys and questionnaires (with closed-ended
questions).

Compared to qualitative techniques, quantitative methods are usually cheaper

and it takes less time to gather data this way. Plus, due to a pretty high level
of standardization, it’s much easier to compare and analyze the findings
obtained using quantitative data collection methods.

Qualitative Data
Unlike quantitative data, which deals with numbers and figures, qualitative
data is descriptive in nature rather than numerical. Qualitative data is usually
not easily measurable as quantitative and can be gained through observation
or open-ended survey or interview questions.

Qualitative research is most likely to provide answers to questions such as

“why?” and “how?”

How?

As mentioned, qualitative data collection methods are most likely to consist of

open-ended questions and descriptive answers and little or no numerical
value. Qualitative data is an excellent way to gain insight into your audience’s
thoughts and behavior (maybe the ones you identified using quantitative
research, but wasn’t able to analyze in greater detail).
Data obtained using qualitative data collection methods can be used to find
new ideas, opportunities, and problems, test their value and accuracy,
formulate predictions, explore a certain field in more detail, and explain the
numbers obtained using quantitative data collection techniques.

As quantitative data collection methods usually do not involve numbers and

mathematical calculations but are rather concerned with words, sounds,
thoughts, feelings, and other non-quantifiable data, qualitative data is often
seen as more subjective, but at the same time, it allows a greater depth of
understanding.

Some of the most common qualitative data collection techniques include

open-ended surveys and questionnaires, interviews, focus groups,
observation, case studies, and so on.

Data Collection Methods

Quantitative data collection methods
1. Closed-ended Surveys and Online Quizzes
Closed-ended surveys and online quizzes are based on questions that give
respondents predefined answer options to opt for. There are two main types
of closed-ended surveys – those based on categorical and those based on
interval/ratio questions.

Categorical survey questions can be further classified into dichotomous

(‘yes/no’), multiple-choice questions, or checkbox questions and can be
answered with a simple “yes” or “no” or a specific piece of predefined
information.

Interval/ratio questions, on the other hand, can consist of rating-scale, Likert-

scale, or matrix questions and involve a set of predefined values to choose
from on a fixed scale. You can learn more about the different types of closed-
ended survey questions here.

Once again, these types of data collection methods are a great choice when
looking to get a simple and easily analyzable counts, such as “85% of
respondents said surveys are an effective means of data collection” or “56%
of men and 61% of women have taken a survey this year” (disclaimer: made-
up stats).
Here’s an example of a closed-ended image survey question created using
LeadQuizzes:

If you’d like to create something like this on your own, here’s a guide on how
to create your own survey. And here’s a bunch of preloaded survey
templates you can use right away.

Qualitative data collection methods

2. Open-Ended Surveys and Questionnaires
Opposite to closed-ended are open-ended surveys and questionnaires. The
main difference between the two is the fact that closed-ended surveys offer
predefined answer options the respondent must choose from, whereas open-
ended surveys allow the respondents much more freedom and flexibility when
providing their answers.

Here’s an example that best illustrates the difference:

When creating an open-ended survey, keep in mind the length of your survey
and the number and complexity of questions. You need to carefully determine
the optimal number of question, as answering open-ended questions can be
time-consuming and demanding, and you don’t want to overwhelm your
respondents.

Compared to closed-ended surveys, one of the quantitative data collection

methods, the findings of open-ended surveys are more difficult to compile and
analyze due to the fact that there are no uniform answer options to choose
from.

3. 1-on-1 Interviews
One-on-one (or face-to-face) interviews are one of the most common types of
data collection methods in qualitative research. Here, the interviewer collects
data directly from the interviewee. Due to it being a very personal approach,
this data collection technique is perfect when you need to gather highly-
personalized data.
Depending on your specific needs, the interview can be informal,
unstructured, conversational, and even spontaneous (as if you were talking to
your friend) – in which case it’s more difficult and time-consuming to process
the obtained data – or it can be semi-structured and standardized to a certain
extent (if you, for example, ask the same series of open-ended questions).

4. Focus groups
The focus groups data collection method is essentially an interview method,
but instead of being done 1-on-1, here we have a group discussion.

Whenever the resources for 1-on-1 interviews are limited (whether in terms of
people, money, or time) or you need to recreate a particular social situation in
order to gather data on people’s attitudes and behaviors, focus groups can
come in very handy.

Ideally, a focus group should have 3-10 people, plus a moderator. Of course,
depending on the research goal and what the data obtained is to be used for,
there should be some common denominators for all the members of the focus
group.
For example, if you’re doing a study on the rehabilitation of teenage female
drug users, all the members of your focus group have to be girls recovering
from drug addiction. Other parameters, such as age, education, employment,
marital status do not have to be similar.

5. Direct observation
Direct observation is one of the most passive qualitative data collection
methods. Here, the data collector takes a participatory stance, observing the
setting in which the subjects of their observation are while taking down notes,
video/audio recordings, photos, and so on.

Due to its participatory nature, direct observation can lead to bias in research,
as the participation may influence the attitudes and opinions of the researcher,
making it challenging for them to remain objective. Plus, the fact that the
researcher is a participant too can affect the naturalness of the actions and
behaviors of subjects who know they’re being observed.

Conclusion
Above, I’ve presented you with 5 different data collection methods that can
help you gather all the quantitative and qualitative data you need. Even
though I’ve classified the techniques according to the type of data you’re most
likely to obtain, many of the methods used above can be used to obtain both
qualitative and quantitative data.

Surveys, as you may have noticed, are particularly effective in collecting both
types of data, depending on whether you structure your survey questions as
open-ended or closed-ended.

If you’d like to create your own survey now, just click on the button below to
get access to our free survey templates!
What is data collection technique ?
●DCT is a technique that allows researcher to systematically collect information
about the study population (People, objects, phenomena…etc) and the settings in
which they occur.There are many different ways to collect data. The approach
selected depends on:-- The study objectives,The study design, andThe availability
of time, money and personnel.
●It also depends on whether the study is intended to produce relatively precise
quantitative findings or to produce qualitative descriptive