Southern Maid Donuts opened over a year ago in Farmerville, Louisiana. It is a franchise offering a variety of options for breakfast.

See http://www.southernmaiddonuts.com/ for additional details.

Southern Maid would like to conduct a study to assess community awareness and to profile customers. A telephone survey was chosen as the data collection method and it was determined that a sample size of 300 would be collected.

Assignment:

1. Define the relevant population for this study (be specific). What are the characteristics of the persons who should be included in the sample?

2. Identify a sample frame (where will you get a list of the population?). Discuss the degree of sample frame error present in your plan (i.e., identify the two sources of sample frame error and discuss the likely impact of each).

3. Specify a sample plan for each of the sampling methods listed below.

For each method, you should include the following steps:

Describe how the sampling method will be administered (For example, if you were to use a blind draw for the Simple Random sample, you would want to describe how each member would be labeled and the procedure used to select each participant.)

Identify the best substitution policy for non-responses.

Discuss the degree of sampling error associated with the technique. (Hint: Consider the disadvantages of each method when discussed sampling error.) Discuss what limitations, if any, are associated with this choice of sampling method.

Sampling Methods:

a. Simple random sampling

b. Systematic sampling

c. Cluster sampling

d. Stratified sampling

e. Convenience sampling

4. Which of the aforementioned five sampling methods would you recommend? Why?