Question

Which sampling method is MOST appropriate in estimating the average number of votes for each candidate in an election across a county of three towns if town A has one million retirees, town B has two million business owners, and town C has three million office workers?

A. Simple random sampling, because the people in the sample are accessible and available.

B. Stratified sampling, because there are specific subgroups to investigate.

C. Systematic sampling, because it is difficult to identify items using a simple random sampling method.

D. Cluster sampling, because the studied population is spread across a wide area such that simple random sampling would be difficult to implement

E. All the above sampling methods

Answer 1

B. Stratified sampling, because there are specific subgroups to investigate.

Explanation:

Stratified Sampling is a sampling method and is used when the population has subgroups with different characteristics. Random sampling is applied in each of the sub-groups proportional to their size and then these samples combined together to create sample of the study.

Since there are three towns with people from different occupations ( retirees,business owners, office workers), it is better to use stratified sampling method.