In quantitative studies, it is particularly important to
understand who your population and who it is not. Therefore, the first thing to
address in this section is who is your target population. Again, the best way
to think about this is who does the study generalize to? So if you were testing
undergraduates, that is who your population really is (contrary to many of the
old studies who make the case that they are similar to the population in
general). Next, you want to state approximately how large the population is
that you are using. This may take some detective work to find.
The next section is Sampling. You rarely can test the entire
population; instead, you must strategically sample to make sure you get a
representative group. How will you do that? There are many ways that have been
suggested, the important thing is to realize the cost and benefit of each
method and how they affect your study. Let's say that you decide that you will
post flyers and have people contact you if they want to participate. There are
a number of costs of doing it this way: you will only get people who frequent
where you are posting flyers, you will only have people who volunteer, and only
people who have a phone to contact you. None of these issues are fatal flaws,
but you need to be aware of them.
What are your inclusion criteria (who can participate) and
exclusion criteria (who cannot participate)? Think details. If you are doing a
an internet survey on survey monkey- inclusion criteria include: people who can
read English, have access to a computer, as well as any issues related to your
population (e.g., divorced for a year).
You will need to do a power analysis to determine how large
your sample should be. Check with your methodologist, as to whether they have a
preference as to how to do it. I generalize recommend using one of the power
analysis calculators available online (do a search for power analysis
calculator). You need to give the website that you used for the calculation and
why you used the parameters that you entered. You may need to talk to your
methodologist about this aspect.
Next time we will continue with quantitative studies and
look at Chapter 3: Recruitment. Do you have an issue or a question that you
would like me to discuss in a future post? Would
you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas!
leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu
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