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A researcher based in Miami wants to learn about the experiences of homeless people in the United States by conducting interviews with them. He plans to conduct in-person interviews with the homeless people he samples. He is having trouble deciding how to draw a representative sample of homeless people because homeless people are difficult to find, often move from place to place, and are often cycled in and out of homelessness. The researcher has one year and a $5,000 grant with which to conduct his interviews.
Your task is to help this researcher.
1. What is the population he wants to generalize to?
2. What are possible sampling frames (sources) from which he can draw his sample?
3. What do you think would be a good/realistic sample size?
4. What sampling methods would you suggest he uses? Why? +800 words
Answer:
1. The population the researcher wants to generalize to is homeless people in the United States.
2. Possible sampling frames from which he can draw his sample include national surveys, government and social services records, shelters, soup kitchens, public transportation hubs, street encampments or public spaces (such as parks) where homeless people are known to congregate, health care facilities that serve homeless populations, and referrals from other members of the community who are familiar with local homeless populations. Other potential sources could include non-profit organizations that work with the homeless population such as Rescue Missions or churches. Primary researchers also have access to online databases of current studies related to homelessness as well as contact lists for advocacy and service providers in their area.
3. A good/realistic sample size depends on a few things – usually how large the population of interest is and what kind of data is needed for study purposes (qualitative or quantitative). If possible it would be ideal to take a nationally representative sample so that results would represent an entire population rather than just one region or demographic group; this requires more resources but yields more reliable findings than localized samples do. Generally speaking though it’s best practice when researching homelessness in particular to aim for at least 100 participants since smaller samples may not capture all relevant experiences adequately due to lack of diversity among participants.
4. There are several different sampling methods available depending on the specific research design needs of this study; these methods can range from simple convenience sampling (recruiting participants randomly through personal acquaintances) through more complex probability sampling techniques such as stratified random sampling (recruiting participants based on predetermined characteristics such as gender or age). Ultimately though probability-based methods will yield better results because they enable researchers to make assumptions about their target population with greater accuracy due to higher numbers coming from a variety of backgrounds/locations/etc., so using some combination of those might be most appropriate here given time/resource constraints.. Alternatively if conducting interviews isn’t feasible given budgetary constraints then virtual interviewing techniques like phone interviews or web surveys may provide a cheaper alternative that still yields useful insights into this subject matter without needing face-to-face interaction each time.