Sampling and Data Collection in Research Paper

Sampling and Data Collection in Research Paper

Lisa Mendez

BSHS/435

8/24/2015

Chris Sites

Sampling and Data Collection in Research Paper

Research is essential to improve the effectiveness of the delivery of human services and to further the education of human service professionals. Research allows human service professionals to understand and apply what was learned in research to better assisting clients to accomplish their objectives and goals. There are many ways to conduct research in human services. I will be discussing sampling and data collection. I will discuss the purpose of sampling and data collection and how it relates to human service. 

Sampling

        Sampling is one method to conduct research. The reason researchers use sampling over studying a whole group is because sometimes the whole group is so large that studying it is not feasible. Researchers can get better information from carefully drawn samples than they can from an entire group. One thing to be careful about when selecting samples is to avoid bias. Using probability sampling is a great way to avoid bias.

        Probability sampling can be used to achieve every element that has the opportunity to be incorporated in the sample. Probability sampling is usually done randomly like pulling names out of a hat or drawing straws. There are four different methods of probability sampling which are Simple random sampling, Systematic sampling, Stratified sampling, and Area sampling (Monette, Sullivan, Dejong,) 2011).

        Sampling can relate to human services when conducting research to find out the quality of service a human service organization provides. Probability sampling can be used by selecting the organization to conduct research at. Once an organization is picked, their records can be reviewed to obtain a list of clients. Once a list of clients is obtained then the clients can be chosen in a random order. By choosing clients randomly we can avoid any bias while conducting our research.

Data Collection

There are four levels of measurement used to gauge data collected which are nominal measures, ordinal measures, interval measures, and ratio measures. Nominal measure is simply naming or categorizing the data that is collected like gender, religion, or ethnicity. Ordinal measure is used to rank or placing the data collected in order. Interval measuring is when you use a numerical scale to measure in intervals like taking the temperature from 0 degrees to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Ratio measurement has all characteristics of interval measurement with zero point as an absolute.

There are two categories of scales of measurement used in research which are reliability and validity. Reliability is used to measure the ability to get a consistent result each time it’s applied. Validity is a kind of measure that is properly executed and how well a test measures what it is claimed to measure. An example of reliability in human services would be a test that is designed to assess the client’s knowledge in vocabulary. The test can be given to the client twice. First test can be on Friday of the first week, and the second test can be given on Friday of the second week. The connection of tests would indicate the stability of the scores. An example of validity in human services could be a weekly schedule for a client. The schedule has different events each day, but the days of the week stay the same. The schedule is reliable because it is consistently showing the same days of the week, but it is not valid because it has different events each day. This means it is not a valid measurement of my client’s weekly schedule. It is important to ensure that data collection methods and instruments are both reliable and valid because if not the right results will not be produced.