Question

Samples that are random are not always representative. Explain why thisis and how social scientists work around it.

Answer 1

Samples that are random are not always representative ... because sometimes variability in different sections of population may be different and hence different sections need different representation. IN that case just taking random samples is not enough .The factor which play a important role here is heterogeneity in population units.

One possible way to get the representative samples is to divide the population into different subgroups according to variability such that units within same group are homogeneous and between groups there is much heterogeneity. This technique is stratified random sampling .

Agricultural experiment and population surveys are conducted under this technique and this give better estimates than random sampling.