Question

If you were an education consultant for basic education, you were invited by United Nations

Human Rights Council (UNHCR) and the United Nations International Children's Emergency

Fund (UNICEF) to provide suggestions and action plans to implement basic education to

displaced Syrian children in Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan.

Before you initiate any development plans on improving living and education conditions of

refugee children, you were asked to present some general investigation to understand the

demography and present conditions of refugee children of 6 to 12 years old. Which sampling

design you would propose as most appropriate to identify a sample representative for the

research project commissioned to you? Then evaluate the strength and weakness of your

sampling design. The sampling design and discussion are to be limited within 2 pages.

Hint:

(1) Check whether there is any ancillary data about displaced children, persons or families

of Syrian refugees in Zaatari camp.

(2) Check the geographical location and distribution of refugee shelters.

Answer 1

As the aim of this experiment is to understand the demography and present conditions of refugee children of the age group of 6 to 12 years, hence Simple Random Sampling will be sufficient in this case.

In this sampling technique, every element has an equal chance of getting selected to be the part sample. It is used when we don’t have any kind of prior information about the target population.

Advantages

The ease of use (in this case) represents the biggest advantage of simple random sampling. Unlike the more complicated sampling methods such as stratified random sampling and probability sampling, there is no need to divide the population into sub-populations or take any other additional steps before selecting members of the population at random in this case.

Secondly, a simple random sample is meant to be an unbiased representation of a group. It is considered a fair way to select a sample from a larger population, since every member of the population has an equal chance of getting selected.

Disadvantages

A sampling error can occur with a simple random sample if the sample does not end up accurately reflecting the population it is supposed to represent. For example, in a simple random sample of 25 employees, it would be possible to draw 25 men even if the population consisted of 125 women and 125 men. Due to this reason, simple random sampling is more commonly used when the researcher knows little about the population. On the contrary, if the researcher knew more, it would be better to use a different sampling technique, such as stratified random sampling, which helps to account for the differences within the population, such as age, race or gender.

But in your case as the gender is not an issue, so you can proceed with this technique of sampling.