Samuel is researching what happens during family dinners in his town. He asks five of his friends about a typical evening. Which of the following is not true?
1)His friends are the sample.
2)The population is all families in his town.
3)He used convenience sampling.
4)The town is a unit in the study.
Town is the population.
The statement that is not true is: 3) He used convenience sampling.
Explanation:
1) Samuel's friends are the sample: In this scenario, Samuel's friends are the people he has chosen to gather information from, and they represent a smaller group within the larger population that he is interested in studying.
2) The population is all families in his town: The population in this case refers to the entire group of interest, which is all the families in Samuel's town. This includes all families and households that live in the town.
3) He used convenience sampling: Convenience sampling is a non-probability sampling technique where the researcher selects participants based on their easy accessibility or proximity. In this case, Samuel asked his friends about their family dinners, which suggests that he did not randomly select the participants but chose them specifically because they were easy for him to approach. However, since Samuel's intention was to understand what happens during family dinners in his town, it is more accurate to say that he used purposeful sampling by selecting individuals with specific characteristics related to the research topic.
4) The town is a unit in the study: The town itself is the unit of analysis in this study. Samuel's research focus is on what happens during family dinners in his town, so the town serves as the unit to examine and analyze the data from his friends' responses.
Therefore, the statement that is not true is number 3) He used convenience sampling.