Chapter 4 Sampling and Collecting data

In Chapter 2 we presented the following definitions of an element, a population, and a sample.

• An element is the entity on which data are collected.

• A population is a collection of all the elements of interest for a particular study.

• A sample is a subset of the population.

The reason we select a sample is to collect data to make an inference and answer research questions about a population. The process of drawing a sample from a population is called sampling.

In this chapter, you will learn about the foundational concepts of data collection and sampling; the methods of sampling in practice and how to do sampling using Excel.