Adequacy and focus of research

It’s unlikely that a business would be able to gather the opinions of everyone in its target market and research will often be carried out on a sample of a population or target market. It’s very important that care is taken when determining the size and characteristics of the sample to ensure that it’s as similar as possible to the market as a whole. It’s also important that the sample is large enough to be representative or the data collected will be incorrect.

With a small sample there is a greater possibility that you will encounter a statistical bias.

Statistical bias is the difference between the estimate and the truth. For example, imagine you are in a class of 20 students. If your sample only contained three girls, your sample would likely not be representative of the whole class. In general, the larger the sample, the more accurate the results.