What do I use

Sociology, development and social work

Community studies, programme evaluation, poverty and livelihood research, policy work.

The usual order: Sample honestly - describe who you reached and who you missed - compare or model - state what the design cannot support.

Your question, and what answers it

And who is missing. A convenience sample honestly described is defensible; the same sample called random is not.

In ZStat: open your study, go to Analysis, and choose descriptives.

What goes wrong in sociology, development and social work

Calling a convenience sample random because a spreadsheet shuffled it.
Deleting incomplete cases without checking who they were.
A limitations section that says only "the sample was small".

ZStat runs these checks whether or not you ask, and stops the analysis when one of them would make the result misleading. You do not have to remember this list.

Other fields

Medicine and clinical research Public health and epidemiology Psychology and behavioural science Education Agriculture and food science Urban planning, estate management and architecture Economics, finance and accounting Engineering, manufacturing and quality

Start free All procedures Questions