ABSTRACT
Sampling is about choosing who or what one wish to study in order to answer research question. Sometimes these units of study are chosen randomly (more typically for quantitative research) and sometimes they are purposively selected (more typically for qualitative research). Qualitative researchers often seek typical cases. Sometimes, though, they deliberately seek atypical, extreme or deviant cases as a means of shedding light on the typical or for their own intrinsic interest. In order to be completely accurate, every person (or case or event) in the population under study would need to be surveyed. This is called a saturation sample or census. Probability sampling refers to sampling in which each unit of the population has an equal (as in the case of simple random sampling) or known chance of being selected for study. The units of the population under study are referred to as the sampling frame.
