A Report to Show Dffering Attitudes to Euthanasia
questionnaire was used to inform the subjects, what the questionnaire was hoping to achieve. The passage was approximately 40 words long and was constructed using a guide from within “Research Methods, A Process of Inquiry, 1993” The introduction and questionnaire can both be seen on the appendix section listed as item number 1.
Fifty graduate and PhD students were chosen at random from The University of Hull (Scarborough Campus), they all served as voluntary participants as did another one hundred and fifty people chosen from the town centre. All participants were right handed as determined by the Literacy Assessment Inventory (Sherman & Kulhany, 1976), and were treated in accordance with the “Ethical Principals of Psychologists” (AMA, 2001).
Twenty-five of the students were female and Twenty-five were male. Seventy-five of the town centre sample were female and the final seventy-five were female. The total number of subjects was two hundred. The subject’s age varied from 15 to 64 as there were no controls placed on age.
The questionnaire was constructed in October 2002 and was conducted on two separate days, which were one week apart. The first survey was conducted within university on the 5th April 2003 and the second survey was conducted on the 12th April 2003 in the centre of town.
Only subjects who were by themselves were chosen to take part in the survey in order to ensure reliability. There was no time limit placed on the conduction of the survey.
No questions were asked in relation to their identities in accordance with their statutory rights, but at the end of the survey all subjects were asked to identify their ethnicity.
Sampling Size
The sampling size of 200 people was required. The estimated response rate was 30% From this the actual sample size of 833 was found using:
833 = 200 * 100
30
As shown by Saunders et al. 2000.
Because of the time constraints involved the number is rounded down to 800 subjects that will be asked. The higher the number of subjects asked the more accurate the results are.
Sampling method
The method of sampling that I have chosen is simple random sampling. This method selects a sample from a target population, where every member has an equal chance of being selected for the sample, and the selections are all independent.
With random sampling Graziano 1993 states that there are no systematic biases that result in some members of the population having a greater chance than others of being selected.
Reliability and validity of data
The reliability and validity of the data can have a great influence on the accuracy of the project. There are two main threats to the reliability of the research subject bias and subject error (Robson, [next page]