For the purposes of this assignment, the research problem I will examine are the factors that contribute to the resignation of first-year teachers. With that in mind, the participants I will use need to be individuals who worked as teachers for only one year and resigned, never to set foot in a classroom again.
Probability Sampling
Simple Random Sampling
Pros
* Good for small populations
* Every member/individual of population has an equal chance for being selected
Cons
* Not good for large populations
* May be technologically dependent -- computers for randomization
Systematic Sampling
Pros
* Good with large populations
Cons
* Can be manipulated due to patterns within population -- periodicity
Stratified Sampling
Pros
* Through grouping, the results can be more representative of the population as a whole
* Less errors
* Grouping also leads researcher to consider more variables i.e. male v. female
Cons
* Can lead to lots of groups
* Cumbersome
Cluster Sampling
Pros
* Saves time and money
Cons
* Less accurate
Nonprobability Sampling
Convenience Sampling
Pros
* Availibilty
* Good at finding relationships
Cons
* Not precise
* Haphazard
* May lead to bias
Quota Sampling
Pros
* Representative of entire population
Cons
* Not random
* Subjects selected based upon specific criteria
Based on these breakdowns I would have to choose the method of stratified sampling to best discover the results. I imagine that there are a number of former first year teachers who never saw year two. These people will no doubt be as diverse as the school systems and students they educated. the use of grouping would help me, the researcher, place the resigned teachers in different groups and sample these groups in order to find any similarities in their responses.
This is a very interesting research topic. A couple thoughts:
ReplyDelete- Are you thinking about doing qualitative interviews or large scale questionnaire? Or something else?
- You say you want to do stratified sampling but that's a probability sample, and I think it might be really hard to get access to a the complete list of teachers who dropped out of teaching after a year. You might want to just do purposeful sampling with a goal of maximum variation (suburban and urban, different subjects taught, gender, race, etc. )