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Sampling in Social Science

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Monday, October 29, 2012 by

I am thinking about the topics we were talking about previoulsy. I am interested in samping which may sound different in different research background.

In Luker’s  Salsa Dancing into the Social Science, she wants to distinguish two different kind of samples. One “sample” defined by canonical social scientist as” systematic random probability sample”,  which means it is drawn from a population where each and every element has statistically equal chance of being chosen.  The national probability survey is expensive to conduct so those surveys are undertaken by the federal government. Many sociologists only perform secondary analysis using the dataset from the government.  When we mention sample, people take for granted that we means probability sample.  But when we perform field research, such as case –oriented research, we are trying to discover the relevant categories, not the distribution from the population. The way the field researcher sampling is to find a case or a set of cases that represents large phenomenon. There are two different sampling among field studies, one is theoretical case of one social process. Another sampling in field study is to keep on finding cases to prove what have found.


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