Before you can calculate a sample size, you need to determine a
few things about the target population and the sample you need:
- Population Size — How many total people fit
your demographic? For instance, if you want to know about mothers
living in the US, your population size would be the total number of
mothers living in the US. Not all populations sizes need to be this
large. Even if your population size is small, just know who fits
into your demographics. Don’t worry if you are unsure about this
exact number. It is common for the population to be unknown or
approximated between two educated guesses.
- Margin of Error (Confidence Interval) — No
sample will be perfect, so you must decide how much error to allow.
The confidence interval determines how much higher or lower than
the population mean you are willing to let your sample mean fall.
If you’ve ever seen a political poll on the news, you’ve seen a
confidence interval. For example, it will look something like this:
“68% of voters said yes to Proposition Z, with a margin of error of
+/- 5%.”
- Confidence Level — How confident do you want
to be that the actual mean falls within your confidence interval?
The most common confidence intervals are 90% confident, 95%
confident, and 99% confident.
- Standard of Deviation — How much variance do
you expect in your responses? Since we haven’t actually
administered our survey yet, the safe decision is to use .5 – this
is the most forgiving number and ensures that your sample will be
large enough.