Read pages 180 to 185 to prepare for this activity.
Working as a small group or in pairs, imagine that you have been asked to carry out research on students’ career aspirations at a local college. The college has 1200 full-time students aged 16-19. Some are on a two-year A level course; others are on vocational courses such as Construction, IT and Business. The town has a mixed ethnic population, with 15% Asian heritage. The college draws its students from the town, and from three other smaller towns nearby.
As you cannot interview every student, you will need to take a representative sample.
You will then ask questions of the members of this sample.
- What kind of sample will you take?
- Will you use a stratified sample
- How will you carry out your sampling?
- How representative do you think this sample will be?
Explain your answers to each of these questions.
