Computing Sample Size Margin Error
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Calculate Sample Size From Margin Of Error And Standard Deviation
Ensure You Get the Correct Sample Size AuthorScott Smith, Ph.D.April 8, 2013 How many responses do you really
Sample Size And Margin Of Error Formula
need? This simple question is a never-ending quandary for researchers. A larger sample can yield more accurate results — but excessive responses can be pricey. Consequential research requires an understanding
Sample Size And Margin Of Error Relationship
of the statistics that drive sample size decisions. A simple equation will help you put the migraine pills away and sample confidently. 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 sample size and margin of error table know about mothers living in the US, your population size would be the total number of mothers living in the US. Don’t worry if you are unsure about this number. It is common for the population to be unknown or approximated. Margin of Error (Confidence Interval) — No sample will be perfect, so you need to 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. 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 .
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discussed in the previous section, the margin of error for sample estimates will shrink with the square root of the sample size. For example, a typical margin of error for sample percents for different https://onlinecourses.science.psu.edu/stat100/node/17 sample sizes is given in Table 3.1 and plotted in Figure 3.2.Table 3.1. Calculated Margins of Error for Selected Sample Sizes Sample Size (n) Margin of Error (M.E.) 200 7.1% 400 5.0% 700 3.8% http://www.robertniles.com/stats/margin.shtml 1000 3.2% 1200 2.9% 1500 2.6% 2000 2.2% 3000 1.8% 4000 1.6% 5000 1.4% Let's look at the implications of this square root relationship. To cut the margin of error in half, like from sample size 3.2% down to 1.6%, you need four times as big of a sample, like going from 1000 to 4000 respondants. To cut the margin of error by a factor of five, you need 25 times as big of a sample, like having the margin of error go from 7.1% down to 1.4% when the sample size moves from n = 200 up to n = 5000.Figure 3.2 Relationship Between margin of error Sample Size and Margin of Error In Figure 3.2, you again find that as the sample size increases, the margin of error decreases. However, you should also notice that there is a diminishing return from taking larger and larger samples. in the table and graph, the amount by which the margin of error decreases is most substantial between samples sizes of 200 and 1500. This implies that the reliability of the estimate is more strongly affected by the size of the sample in that range. In contrast, the margin of error does not substantially decrease at sample sizes above 1500 (since it is already below 3%). It is rarely worth it for pollsters to spend additional time and money to bring the margin of error down below 3% or so. After that point, it is probably better to spend additional resources on reducing sources of bias that might be on the same order as the margin of error. An obvious exception would be in a government survey, like the one used to estimate the unemployment rate, where even tenths of a percent matter. ‹ 3.3 The Beauty of Sampling up 3.5 Simple Random Sampling and Other Sampling Methods › Printer-friendly version Navigation Start H
accurate, assuming you counted the votes correctly. (By the way, there's a whole other topic in math that describes the errors people can make when they try to measure things like that. But, for now, let's assume you can count with 100% accuracy.) Here's the problem: Running elections costs a lot of money. It's simply not practical to conduct a public election every time you want to test a new product or ad campaign. So companies, campaigns and news organizations ask a randomly selected small number of people instead. The idea is that you're surveying a sample of people who will accurately represent the beliefs or opinions of the entire population. But how many people do you need to ask to get a representative sample? The best way to figure this one is to think about it backwards. Let's say you picked a specific number of people in the United States at random. What then is the chance that the people you picked do not accurately represent the U.S. population as a whole? For example, what is the chance that the percentage of those people you picked who said their favorite color was blue does not match the percentage of people in the entire U.S. who like blue best? Of course, our little mental exercise here assumes you didn't do anything sneaky like phrase your question in a way to make people more or less likely to pick blue as their favorite color. Like, say, telling people "You know, the color blue has been linked to cancer. Now that I've told you that, what is your favorite color?" That's called a leading question, and it's a big no-no in surveying. Common sense will tell you (if you listen...) that the chance that your sample is off the mark will decrease as you add more people to your sample. In other words, the more people you ask, the more likely you are to get a representative sample. This is easy so far, right? Okay, enough with the common sense. It's time for some math. (insert smirk here) The formula that describes the relationship I just mentioned is basically this: The margin of error in a sample = 1 divided by the square root of the number of people in the sample How did someone come up with that formula, you ask? Like most formulas in statistics, this one can trace its roots back to pathetic gamblers who were so desperate to hit the jackpot that they'd even stoop to mathematics for an "edge." If you really want to know the gory details, the formula is derived from the standard deviation of the proportion of times that a researcher