Question

The superintendent of schools in a small town in Ohio made a lot of policy changes to the way school administration worked in his district. A researcher at a nearby university wanted to look at what teachers in his district thought about the changes. The researcher made a list of all of the schools in the district and used a random number generator to select a sample of five schools from the district. Then the researcher interviewed every teacher at each of those five schools. What sampling method did the researcher use?

1. Systematic sampling
2. Simple random sampling
3. Purposive sampling
4. Cluster sampling

Answer 1

The study provided uses a Cluster sampling method.

Explanation:

The researcher first selects all the schools in the district.

Then he samples 5 schools from the entire district using a random number generator.

Then the researcher interviews every teacher from the 5 schools selected.

This is an example of cluster sampling.

In a Cluster sampling method, the researchers first divide the entire population into homogeneous groups, then selects a random sample of groups form the population. Then they select a random sample from each group selected.

If the researcher samples the entire groups selected then this is the case of one-stage cluster sampling and if they select a random sample of fixed size from each group selected then this a case of two-stage sampling.

Thus, the study provided uses a Cluster sampling method.