Question

An airline at the Rochester Airport wants to determine passenger satisfaction with their flying experience. There are 3 morning flights, 5 afternoon flights and 4 evening flight. All planes for this airline have the same configuration – with 24 seats in first class and 156 seats in coach. Each passenger has a ticket number, which is scanned as they board the plane in Rochester.

Describe BOTH a stratified sampling method and a cluster sampling method you could use to survey airline passengers.  Be specific with regards to the situation above.

Answer 1

Stratified sampling method-

We have to proceed as follows.

• We have to divide the passengers into homogeneous strata. There are two types of passengers as first class and coach.
• We take all passengers in first class together in a strata.
• We take all passengers in coach together in another strata.
• Based on suitable allocation procedure (equal allocation, proportional allocation, Neyman allocation or otherwise), we obtain number of samples to be drawn from each of the strata.
• We draw sample values from each strata using any sampling method (simple random sampling, systematic sampling or otherwise).

Cluster sampling method-

We have to proceed as follows.

• We have to divide the passengers into heterogeneous cluster. There are 3+5+4 = 12 flights. Each flight can be treated as a cluster.
• Based on number of sample values to gather, we choose corresponding number of flights so that we can take all passengers (both in first class and in coach) of our selected flights.
• We select particular flights using simple random sampling.
• We take all passengers of selected flights as our sample units.