Research Methods in Tourism, Hospitality and Events Management

4.4.1 Probability sampling

In situations where the extent of the survey population is known, an individual

sampling unit (often in tourism, hospitality or events, an individual person) has a

known chance of being included in the survey. For example, if a company in the

industry has developed an accurate sampling frame of its customer base, then the

potential population is known. If this is, say, 200,000 individual customers and a

sample size of 2,000, then each customer must have a 1 in 100 chance of being

---

included in the sample. The calculation of the probability in this instance is behind

the concept of probability sampling. However, of equal importance is that the actual

selection of the 2,000 individual respondents must be done on a random basis.

Methods of selecting a sample randomly will be discussed shortly, but first it is

necessary to define what we mean by random sampling.