Sampling Strategy and Sample Size for Quantitative

Sampling Strategy and Sample Size for Quantitative Research Plan

Referred to as modern-day slavery, the criminal and devastating incidences of human trafficking is something that are of responsibility of the entire international stage. This paper will look at the global emergency of human trafficking and will seek to examine the best method of gathering a sample for a quantitative research study. This research study seeks to accumulate the most relevant and up-to-date numbers that are connected to this international tragedy. Thus, the overall purpose of this study is to determine the most overwhelming ways that women and children are pulled into human trafficking using a 2-tailed hypothesis. The null hypothesis is that all of the ways in which women and children are led into trafficking are more or less equivalent (such as deception, forced marriage, and kidnapping. The alternative hypothesis is that there are significances in the rates and manner by which women are pulled into human trafficking.

Thus, according to the hypotheses set forth, the independent variables are the women and children led into trafficking, and the dependent variables are the ways in which they are forced or led into trafficking and the rate of each way.

Population

The ideal sampling site would be a geographical location which has been cited as an overall hotspot for trafficking and related activities in particular transit routes. This research will select sampling site that signifies an environment which is ripe for conditions like human trafficking: densely populated, rural, and which has the bulk of the residents living at an economic disadvantage, along with one which has an incredibly high drop-out rate among students. Selecting a nation which is not only poor but which has easy border crossings which aren't well-regulated also demonstrates a worthy sampling site. All of these factors make a particular area more high risk than other areas.

Given these factors, the population selected will be women and children in Latvia, or the Republic of Latvia. Latvia is a high-risk area for human trafficking. Part of the reason for this revolves around the geographical location of Lativa. It is bordered on four sides by four different nations: Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, and Estonia. For eastern Europeans and other native peoples, it's quite easy to travel between borders. On the fifth side, the nation is bordered by the Baltic Sea. The nation is not only easy to travel in and out of from surrounding areas, but it's easy to access by sea, with poorly regulated ports (CIA.gov, 2013). Economically speaking, there's enough disadvantage in the country to spark a climate where human trafficking will start to flourish. In Lativa, a third of the GDP was fostered from a small economy based on exports along with transit services which were highly developed along with timer wood processing, food products and manufacturing items (CIA.gov, 2013).

In the case of this proposed study, the population of interest is the population of women and children in disadvantaged nation which is known to be a breeding ground for trafficking, as stated within the research purpose and hypotheses. More specifically, the population of interest will be women and children ages 10 to 35 living within Latvia. This further specificity allows for greater precision within the overall research at large and helps to demonstrate to researchers how the overall population of interest connects strongly to the research purpose and design in general and can point to the scope of inferences made by the research results (Litt, 2010).

The approximate size of the Latvian population of women and children ages 10 to 35 are as follows: 14% of the population are 0-14 years of age, with males at 155,549 and females 148,811 (indexmundi). Of this population, the amount of individuals who are ages 10 and over are 76,017 (indexmundi). The percentage of the Latvia population which is 15-24 years are at 11.9%; for females the exact number is 126,419 (indexmundi). The number over women ages 25-35 are 248,405 at 22.3% of the population (indexmundi). Thus, the samples used for this study will be taken from this particular population.

Sampling

Within this particular study, two groups were already identified as the independent variables: group one, the women led into trafficking. Group two, the children led into trafficking. Determining what the best sampling strategy is for this work is really essential and the overall objective of the study, along with the hypotheses, and chosen statistical exams need to be taken into strict consideration. One consideration that needed to be made was the sheer difficulty in composing a legitimate sample for in this regard: "While there seems to be consensus that trafficking affects rare and elusive populations and that random sampling is nearly impossible, there are however, differences in the nature of samples. As mentioned above, many samples have a clear selection bias, reflecting the more institutional activity than the actual distribution of trafficked victims. This bias is difficult to avoid due to the hidden nature of the phenomenon…" (Lazcko & Godziak, 2005). A particular solution that can thwart this bias generally revolves around the task of choosing a specific subpopulation. Essentially, how to obtain a clean population without perpetuating bias was another aspect that this study was focused upon. This means that the researchers had to consider if the sample would be founded on a sampling strategy that was probability or nonprobability based.

Furthermore, because ANOVA was going to be used since two groups were going to be compared along with their averages, this had to be taken into consideration when choosing a sampling method. Given all of these factors, along with the hypotheses, variables and goals of this particular study, a random sampling strategy is ideal.

Stratified sampling refers to a technique of sampling from a specific population, which is treated as a clearly identifiable group. "When sub-populations vary considerably, it is advantageous to sample each subpopulation (stratum) independently. Stratification is the process of grouping members of the population into relatively homogeneous subgroups before sampling. The strata should be mutually exclusive: every element in the population must be assigned to only one stratum. The strata should also be collectively exhaustive: no population element can be excluded. Then random or systematic sampling is applied within each stratum" (Princeton.edu). Thus, in this case, one of the overwhelming benefits is that this method can remarkably improve the sampling error and produce a weighted mean which has less variability. Given the diversity of the population proposed in this research, a stratified survey will be more representative of these participants and that estimates will be made with a higher level of accuracy. One disadvantage of course is that this method is more complex, requires more effort and that all strata have to be acutely defined.

Thus, in this study, stratification was a necessity in order to determine equivalent groups in regards to the characteristics of the independent variables. The characteristics were the ages of the women and children and their aesthetic appearance (ie, were they very attractive and were they the type of individuals that would draw much notice in the world of human trafficking). Three strata composed of pre-teens, teenagers and adults would be developed founded on the overall results of the surveys conducted. The stratified groups would then be randomly sampled so that a total population of 450,841. The sample selection was founded on the results created from G*Power results.