ABSTRACT
The cost of carrying out a piece of research is the most important obstacle that a researcher must overcome. Cost is the master obstacle because almost all other obstacles can be overcome with large amounts of money and time. It is more than an obstacle, however; it is often the very factor that makes research necessary or useful. The cost of the inaccuracy caused by flaws in existing data must be weighed against the cost of creating new data. The decisions on whether to sample, how to sample, how large a sample to take, and what sampling method to use are basically cost decisions. Cost also affected the geographic pattern of Kinsey’s sampling. Bias and cost must also be balanced when deciding how much money and effort to spend on converting nomesponders into responders. Cost is the master obstacle to getting empirical knowledge, because with large enough expenditures of time and money almost all other obstacles can be overcome.
