ACCA Applied Knowledge · Management Accounting · Sampling methods
A firm asks a few experienced production supervisors, selected because of their knowledge of the process, to estimate typical machine downtime. This is an example of which sampling method?
This is judgemental, or purposive, sampling. The researcher deliberately selects supervisors on the basis of their expertise rather than at random, which can give useful insight but risks bias from the selector's judgement.
- AJudgemental (purposive) samplingCorrect
- BSimple random sampling
- CCluster sampling
- DSystematic sampling
Explanation
Choosing respondents deliberately because of their expertise is judgemental sampling. Random methods give every item a known chance of selection, which is not the case here. The result depends on the researcher's judgement and may be biased.
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