Statistics multiple choice

Question

To determine the favorite summer break destination of college students, 10 colleges are randomly selected from the United States and all students are surveyed at each of the selected colleges. This is an example of what type of sampling?

a. Simple Random Sampling

b. Cluster Sampling

c. Systematic Sampling

d. Stratified Sampling

e. Convenience Sampling

Answer 1

If it was simple random sampling, it would just pick a random sample of college students from the total number of college students in the country, but it doesn't. If it was systematic sampling, then it would pick every 5th or 6th or 100th (depending on the system) student randomly from the total number of college students in the country, so probably not that one either. If it was stratified sampling, it would divide the college students into homogeneous sub-groups, but it doesn't. If it was convenience sampling, they would have just sampled whoever was most convenient, like students from the university closest to them.

This looks like cluster sampling, where an entire population (college students) is divided into clusters (colleges), and then all of the elements in each cluster are sampled.