Participants | Introducing key terms

Read the words and discuss what you think they might mean before revealing the definition.

	Target Populations — The group of individuals that a researcher is interested in studying e.g. people in the UK.
	Sampling Frames — A group/population that is identified when it is unrealistic to study the whole target population e.g. people in London.
	Random Sampling — A sampling technique where participants are selected from the sampling frame, where everyone has an equal chance of being selected. E.g. Names are pulled out of a hat, or a computer is used to randomly select participants.
	Opportunity Sampling — A sampling technique where participants are selected at the researcher’s convenience without knowing any details about the sample in advance e.g. picking people who were there at the time, in your specific location.
	Systematic Sampling — A sampling technique where every nth person on a list is selected by the researcher e.g. every 3^rd house on a street, or 5^th person on a register.
	Stratified Sampling — A sampling technique where the target group is divided into subgroups, e.g. by sex, and then the participants are selected randomly from each subgroup.
	Quota Sampling — A sampling technique where the target population is divided into subgroups, e.g. by sex, and the participants are chosen from each subgroup at the convenience of the researcher.
	Self-Selected Sampling — A sampling technique where participants volunteer (select themselves) for research e.g. they come forward/respond to the psychologist after reading an advertisement in a newspaper or on a notice board.
	Snowball Sampling — A sampling technique where participants are initially recruited by the psychologist and then those participants recruit further participants from people they know, therefore the sample group appears to ‘snowball’.
	Observational Sampling Techniques — A sampling technique that is used to collect data about specific behaviours or events within specific time frames.
	Event Sampling — Where participants are observed by the psychologist, who records a specific behaviour (event) each time it occurs to create a total score.
	Time Sampling — Where the psychologist observes and records behaviour (such as a score) at specific time intervals, e.g. every 15 minutes, and then creates an average score for each participant being observed.