CO 600 Assignment 10

Question 14.6

Your task is to interview a representative sample of attendees for the large concert venue where you work. The new season schedule includes 200 live concerts featuring all types of musicians and musical groups. Since neither the number of attendees nor their descriptive characteristics are known in advance, you decide on nonprobability sampling. Based on past configurations, you can calculate the number of tickets that will be available for each of the 200 concerts. Thus, collectively, you will know the number of possible attendees for each type of music. From attendance research conducted at concerts held by the Glacier Symphony during the previous two years, you can obtain gender data on attendees by type of music. How would you conduct a reasonably reliable nonprobability sample?

            The task presented is to conduct a reasonably reliable nonprobability sample of attendees for a large concert venue at the researcher’s place of employment.  The researcher has chosen to implement nonprobability sampling as the method to conduct the research.  According to Cooper and Schindler, nonprobability sampling is used when the sampling base should be “arbitrary and subjective…with a pattern or scheme in mind” (2014, p. 343).  Nonprobability sampling eliminates the randomness that can be found in other sampling methods and simply focuses on a targeted population.  “With nonprobability sampling there is no way of estimating the probability that each element has of being included in the sample, and no assurance that every element has some chance of being included” (Field, Pruchno, Bewley, Lemay, Jr., & Levinsky, 2016, p. 567).  This method permits specific persons to be included in the sample in order to gain a better understanding of that specific population.

            There are many types of nonprobability sampling methods but quota sampling would prove to be the most beneficial for the type of sampling the research is calling for.  Quota sampling utilizes a sample that is representative of the population being measured.  There are two known control dimensions related to the sample population which is the gender of concert attendees and the genres of music that will be performed at the concerts.  These records have been made available to the researcher of those concerts held in the past for the purposes of the research study.  The researcher will be able to determine the genders commonly associated with the various types of music.  With this information, the researcher can calculate what percentage of males and females prefer a certain genre of music.  The researcher can then determine the ratio of males to females and convert that to a sampling quota.  If 60% of the classical concert attendees are male and 40% are female, then the sample population that should be interviewed is at a 6:4 ratio (males: females) which would be an accurate representation.   The sample population can be further broken down by other control groups revealing other demographics such as age, ethnicity, marital status, education-level and socio-economic status.  “Quota sampling, when performed on a sufficient number of criteria and with professionals who master the possible flaws at the level of the interviewers, proves to be a very good method of administering questionnaires, and at a cost that is reasonable” (Bréchon, 2015, p. 80).  

            One of the problems that may be encountered and must be considered by the researcher is the fact that because the population that is targeted it may be subject to errors.  “Nonprobability sampling makes it impossible to estimate sampling errors, thereby limiting the extent to which valid inferences to a population can be made” (Field, Pruchno, Bewley, Lemay, Jr., & Levinsky, 2016, p. 567). However, for the purposes of this research, nonprobability sampling would prove beneficial for informational purposes.  Another factor to consider is that the historic records provided for the research cannot be too dated or it could skew the data.  Cooper and Schindler state how it is common that control groups provided in a sample contain information that is out-of-date resulting in inaccurate data (2014, p. 360).  For example, the music that someone listens to at the age of 20 may be very different from the music they listen to at the age of 50.  Therefore, parameters must be established for the time frame on any historical records used for the purposes of the sample design as they should not be too dated because the data can change over time.    The book of Revelations states, “Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this" (Revelations 1:19, English Standard Version).  This is an applicable reference on the importance of the recording of data for events that have previously occurred in order to predict trends in the near future.

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