1.13:
Convenience Sampling Method
Convenience sampling is a common method of sample collection where the samples are drawn because they are easy to obtain.
For example, a store owner wants feedback about the products that are sold. One of the easiest ways to do so is by asking questions to the customers who just happen to be in his store.
Surveys conducted on social media, shopping malls, or randomly on campus are a few more examples of convenience sampling.
This approach is often advantageous—samples are easy to obtain, the method is cost-effective, and it consumes less time. This method can be used to carry out a pilot study or to generate a hypothesis.
However, samples drawn by this method are highly biased, do not accurately represent the population, and all factors that might influence the subjects' responses are not considered.
1.13:
Convenience Sampling Method
Sampling is a technique to select a portion (or subset) of the larger population and study that portion (the sample) to gain information about the population. Data are the result of sampling from a population. The sampling method ensures that samples are drawn without bias and accurately represent the population.
Convenience sampling is a non-random method of sample selection; this method selects individuals that are easily accessible and may result in biased data. For example, a marketing study related to a new software launch conducted by a computer software store by interviewing the customers is an example of convenience sampling. The results of convenience sampling may be perfect in some cases and highly biased (favor specific outcomes) in others.
Convenience sampling lacks accuracy since it does not consider the actual representation of the population. However, sometimes, it is the only possible sampling method available. For example, consider a college student doing a term project who wants to know the average soda consumption in the college town on Friday night. He goes to a nearby party to survey soda consumption. If the college town has a small population, mainly consisting of students, and a graduation party is chosen for the survey, the sample has a fair chance to represent the population.
This text is adapted from Openstax, Introductory Statistics, Section 1.2 Data, Sampling, and Variation in Data and Sampling