sample

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Related to Snowball sample: quota sample, Simple random sample

sample

  1. part of a total population that can be analysed to make inferences about the whole population (see SAMPLING).
  2. a small amount of raw material or finished product whose quality or performance can be tested as a guide to the quality or performance of a whole batch of material or product (see QUALITY CONTROL, ACCEPTANCE SAMPLING).
  3. a small trial pack of a product or brand which is used to encourage buyers to try it out (see SALES PROMOTION).
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Perhaps a snowball sample could more profitably uncover this "difficult to locate" population.
Conservatives on campus
She laughably describes Kinsey as having adopted "objective statistical methods" and as having sought a "representative sample of sex histories" (pp 24, 388) But Kinsey is surely a classic example of a snowball sample; he took histories wherever he could find them, especially if they were from frequenters of gay bars and from prisoners.
An American Obsession: Science, Medicine and Homosexuality in Modern Society
A purposive (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) sample was built for key informants (executive director, union president, key managers and workers) while a snowball sample of front-line staff was built in two of the three sites.
Losing the "eyes in the back of our heads": social service skills, lean caring, and violence

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