Exam 15: Sampling

A researcher selects a sample in this way. The researcher paints numbers on 100 ping-pong balls and paints half of the balls blue and half of them green. The researcher puts the blue half onto a large tray and the green half onto another large tray. Then the researcher mixes each tray of balls and trains a dog to bring 10 balls from each tray to the researcher, gently and systematically, one at a time. What type of sample is this?

A researcher contacts seven large hospitals and makes arrangements to recruit 55 patients from each of their emergency rooms. If this is cluster sampling, how were the seven large hospitals chosen?

What would represent a hypothetical population?

A researcher is studying sleep habits of household cats that belong to families with small children. The families live in urban areas. In this study, what is/are the element(s)?

A researcher attempted to recruit all 150 of the patients seen in the emergency department in a 3-month period for diverticulitis, but only 120 consented to participate. What is the sample size?

A sample is chosen for a study on average heights and weights of adult males in a major city. The researcher uses a convenience sampling method, enacting this by going door-to-door in a neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. Unbeknownst to the researcher, this neighborhood is very rich in persons of Norwegian descent, who coincidentally are the tallest Caucasians on the planet. What type of sampling error is most likely to occur due to this sampling method?

A woman answers the telephone and hears, "Good morning. You have been selected randomly by our marketing department because of your recent purchase of McCarthy's Natural Yogurt, several organic raw vegetables, and two types of tofu. As a woman with interest in safe and healthy products, we are asking you to participate in a brief telephone survey." What is this?

Why are broad sampling criteria preferable for descriptive nursing studies?

Why are convenience samples used so frequently in nursing research, when a random sample would allow for greater generalizability?

Convenience sampling + stratification = what?

What are the true statements about inclusion and exclusion criteria?

A graduate student has a close friend who is recovering from colon cancer and has a permanent colostomy. For the master's thesis, the student decides to conduct qualitative research on adjustment to living with a permanent colostomy after colon cancer resection. The student asks the friend for help in recruiting participants for the research. The friend identifies a colon cancer support group to which the friend belongs and volunteers to bring a printout of the research study's purpose and general description to the next support group meeting. If the researcher acquires all of the study participants in this way, what is the method of sampling used?

Inclusion criteria differ from sample characteristics. Which of the following are plausible inclusion sampling criteria for a study conducted on an acute care ward of a major hospital?

Why would a researcher use an elimination criterion like "Must not have baseline liver function tests that are outside the normal range"?

A researcher wants to maximize the generalizability of a planned experimental study's results. What can the researcher do to achieve this goal, relative to sampling?

A researcher consented 75 subjects, but 15 dropped out of the study while it was still in progress. What was the sample attrition rate?

Which of the following are true statements related to determination of minimum sample size?

When grounded theory researchers recruit subjects who can provide relevant information to explain a cluster of interlocking ideas that is unclear to the researchers, what kind of sampling is used?

A researcher e-mails links to an online survey about multi-tasking and overcommittedness both on and off the job, as they relate to quality of life, to a random selection of 20,000 RNs in all 50 states; this represents about 1% of the population of RNs. The return rate on the tool is 5%. The goal of this sampling method is to obtain a representative sample. Choose the correct statement(s) relative to the sample's representativeness.

Which of the following types of sampling is least common in qualitative research?