Question

Situation 1 04 Marks An organization is planning for sampling procedure to apply in their company on-site kindergarten facility. But before taking further steps, it wants to get the reactions of four groups to the idea: (1) Employees who are parents of kindergarten-age children, and where both are working outside of the home, (2) employees who are parents of kindergarten age children, but where one of them is not working outside of the home, (3) single parents with kindergarten-age children, and (4) all those without children of kindergarten age. If the four groups are expected to represent 60%, 7%, 23%, and 10 % respectively, in the population of 420 employees in the company.

Requirement: What would be appropriate sampling technique to apply to represent four groups, justify your answer?

Answer 1

Question:

An organization is planning for sampling procedure to apply in their company on-site kindergarten facility. But before taking further steps, it wants to get the reactions of four groups to the idea: (1) Employees who are parents of kindergarten-age children, and where both are working outside of the home, (2) employees who are parents of kindergarten age children, but where one of them is not working outside of the home, (3) single parents with kindergarten-age children, and (4) all those without children of kindergarten age. If the four groups are expected to represent 60%, 7%, 23%, and 10 % respectively, in the population of 420 employees in the company.

Requirement: What would be appropriate sampling technique to apply to represent four groups, justify your answer?

Answer :

The appropriate sampling technique to apply to represent four groups will be stratified sampling.

To justify this statement, first we need to understand what stratified sampling is and then we can connect the same with the case given in the question.

So, let's start with what stratified sampling techinque is all about :

Stratified sampling :

In this method, the population is first divided into subgroups (or strata) who all share a similar characteristic. It is used when we might reasonably expect the measurement of interest to vary between the different subgroups, and we want to ensure representation from all the subgroups. For example, in a study of stroke outcomes, we may stratify the population by sex, to ensure equal representation of men and women. The study sample is then obtained by taking equal sample sizes from each stratum. In stratified sampling, it may also be appropriate to choose non-equal sample sizes from each stratum. For example, in a study of the health outcomes of nursing staff in a county, if there are three hospitals each with different numbers of nursing staff (hospital A has 500 nurses, hospital B has 1000 and hospital C has 2000), then it would be appropriate to choose the sample numbers from each hospital proportionally (e.g. 10 from hospital A, 20 from hospital B and 40 from hospital C). This ensures a more realistic and accurate estimation of the health outcomes of nurses across the county, whereas simple random sampling would over-represent nurses from hospitals A and B. The fact that the sample was stratified should be taken into account at the analysis stage.

Stratified sampling improves the accuracy and representativeness of the results by reducing sampling bias. However, it requires knowledge of the appropriate characteristics of the sampling frame (the details of which are not always available), and it can be difficult to decide which characteristic(s) to stratify by.

Justification in our case :

In stratified samling method, total population is divided into subgroups and each other is divided based on the similar charateristics. In the scenario given above in the question , we also have been given four groups in which total population has been divided based on the particular group specific characteristics.

It is clearly mentioned that organisation wants to get the reactions of four groups to the idea: (1) Employees who are parents of kindergarten-age children, and where both are working outside of the home, (2) employees who are parents of kindergarten age children, but where one of them is not working outside of the home, (3) single parents with kindergarten-age children, and (4) all those without children of kindergarten age. If the four groups are expected to represent 60%, 7%, 23%, and 10 % respectively, in the population of 420 employees in the company.

Therefore, stratified sampling techinque would be the appropriate sampling technique to apply to represent four groups given above.