PURPOSE OF SAMPLING:
When the population is too large and spread oyer a vast area, sampling needs to be done for the economy of time, energy and cost. But it is also necessary to adopt a method of sampling by which we can generalize about the population. This process of stretching the conclusions from the sample findings to describe the total population is called as generalization.
Let us take the same example of rural mothers of village A. suppose we study 100 rural mothers, can we then generalize and say from findings that these findings can be extended to all the rural mothers of this village? We can definitely generalize the findings on the 100 rural mothers i.e. the study sample, Whether we can generalize on all the mothers of the village from which the sample was drawn would depend primarily on how the sample was drawn from the population.
Researcher works with sample rather than with population because:
- It is more economical in regard to time,'money, material, efforts and resources, etc.
- Accessibility of researcher to sample then to entire population.
- It is practical and effective means of data collection, because it is unnecessary to gather information about some phenomenon from entire pqpulation. It is almost always possible to obtain a reasonably accurate understanding of problem understudy by securing information from a sample.