Calculating Sample Size
Calculating Sample Size
coursera.org/learn/process-data/supplement/blyd3/calculating-sample-size
Before you dig deeper into sample size, familiarize yourself with these terms and
definitions:
Terminology Definitions
Population The entire group that you are interested in for your study. For example,
if you are surveying people in your company, the population would be
all the employees in your company.
Confidence How confident you are in the survey results. For example, a 95%
level confidence level means that if you were to run the same survey 100
times, you would get similar results 95 of those 100 times. Confidence
level is targeted before you start your study because it will affect how
big your margin of error is at the end of your study.
Confidence The range of possible values that the population’s result would be at
interval the confidence level of the study. This range is the sample result +/- the
margin of error.
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Things to remember when determining the size of your sample
When figuring out a sample size, here are things to keep in mind:
Don’t use a sample size less than 30. It has been statistically proven that 30 is the
smallest sample size where an average result of a sample starts to represent the
average result of a population.
The confidence level most commonly used is 95%, but 90% can work in some cases.
Note: Sample size calculators use statistical formulas to determine a sample size. More
about these are coming up in the course! Stay tuned.
Still curious? Without getting too much into the math, check out these articles:
Central Limit Theorem (CLT): This article by Investopedia explains the Central
Limit Theorem and briefly describes how it can apply to an analysis of a stock index.
Sample Size Formula: This article by Statistics Solutions provides a little more detail
about why some researchers use 30 as a minimum sample size.
For example, if you live in a city with a population of 200,000 and get 180,000 people to
respond to a survey, that is a large sample size. But without actually doing that, what
would an acceptable, smaller sample size look like?
Would 200 be alright if the people surveyed represented every district in the city?
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A sample size of 200 might be large enough if your business problem is to find out
how residents felt about the new library
A sample size of 200 might not be large enough if your business problem is to
determine how residents would vote to fund the library
You could probably accept a larger margin of error surveying how residents feel about the
new library versus surveying residents about how they would vote to fund it. For that
reason, you would most likely use a larger sample size for the voter survey.
Refer to the Determine the Best Sample Size video for a demonstration of a sample size
calculator, or refer to the Sample Size Calculator reading for additional information.
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