Quantitative Methods Questions
The main difference between a population and a sample is the group of individuals they represent.
A population refers to the entire set of individuals or elements that share a common characteristic or attribute. It includes every member of the group being studied, and its size is typically large and diverse. For example, if we are studying the voting behavior of all registered voters in a country, the population would consist of every registered voter in that country.
On the other hand, a sample is a subset or a smaller representation of the population. It is a selected group of individuals taken from the population to gather data and make inferences about the larger population. The sample is chosen in a way that it is representative of the population, ensuring that the characteristics of the sample closely resemble those of the population. Using the previous example, a sample could be a randomly selected group of 1000 registered voters from the entire population of registered voters in the country.
In summary, a population represents the entire group being studied, while a sample is a smaller subset of the population used to gather data and make generalizations about the larger population.