Research Methods in Tourism, Hospitality and Events Management

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4

 Selecting a sample

Learning objectives

From reading this chapter, you should be able to:

understand the need for sampling

understand how to determine a sampling unit and construct an appropriate

sampling frame

show awareness of the range of different types of sampling and know

where it is appropriate to use them

appreciate the necessary criteria when deciding the size of a sample.

4.1 Overview

Research in tourism, hospitality and events is undertaken by students to answer

research questions. This is usually in the form of a final-year project or dissertation,

or may be in the form of an applied consultancy project for a sector contact. This

could be an organisation that you have already worked for on a part-time basis or as

part of an industrial placement or internship. If this is the case, the answers you are

about to find may or may not be used to inform management decisions. For instance,

a tour operator may want to know what trust people have in their brochures or what

types of recreational activities their customers are looking for whilst on a short break

to a luxury hotel in the countryside. They may ask you to do this research on their

behalf because they are interested or too busy to do it themselves!

Research for organisations that uses surveys or interviews often includes general

statements about respondents’ feelings and opinions that the organisation is keen to

know about. However, in finding answers to these sorts of questions the researcher is

faced not only with the difficulty of selecting suitable methods of data collection and

survey design, but also with deciding whom to ask. When research focuses on

attitudes to existing products, current customers could be asked to comment, unless

there are proposals which will dramatically change the customer profile. However, if

the research is associated with establishing new products, whom should you ask?

And if the research involves talking to managers about their opinions, then who

should be asked and why? And will you get access to these respondents?

In addition to whom to ask, how many people’s views are needed? Often, it is not

feasible to ask everybody who could be in the sample, for example those people who

have purchased a holiday, but asking too few people may not provide a sufficient

amount of reliable data on which to base your research findings, or may not help to

make a management decision in a practical organisation. The aim of this chapter is to

address these issues in a practical and pragmatic way, and to give you examples of

practical sampling that have been completed by real students during their research.