Sample Size Decision

Sample size Variables Based on Target Population

Before you can calculate a sample size, you need to determine a few things about the target population and the sample you need:

Population Size: How many total people fit your demographic? For instance, if you want to know about mothers living in the US, your population size would be the total number of mothers living in the US. Not all populations’ sizes need to be this large. Even if your population size is small, just know who fits into your demographics. Don’t worry if you are unsure about this exact number. It is common for the population to be unknown or approximated between two educated guesses.

Margin of Error (Confidence Interval): No sample will be perfect, so you must decide how much error to allow. The confidence interval determines how much higher or lower than the population mean you are willing to let your sample mean fall. If you’ve ever seen a political poll on the news, you’ve seen a confidence interval. For example, it will look something like this: “68% of voters said yes to Proposition Z, with a margin of error of +/- 5%.”

Confidence Level: How confident do you want to be that the actual mean falls within your confidence interval? The most common confidence intervals are 90% confident, 95% confident, and 99% confident.

Standard of Deviation: How much variance do you expect in your responses? Since we haven’t actually administered our survey yet, the safe decision is to use .5; This is the most forgiving number and ensures that your sample will be large enough.

Calculating Sample Size

Okay, now that we have these values defined, we can calculate our needed sample size. This can be done using an online sample size calculator or with paper and pencil.

Your confidence level corresponds to a Z-score. This is a constant value needed for this equation. Here are the z-scores for the most common confidence levels:

90% – Z Score = 1.645

95% – Z Score = 1.96

99% – Z Score = 2.576

If you choose a different confidence level, use this Z-score table* to find your score.

Next, plug in your Z-score, Standard of Deviation, and confidence interval into the sample size calculator or into this equation:**

Necessary Sample Size = (Z-score)2 * StdDev*(1-StdDev) / (margin of error)2

Here is an example of how the math works assuming you chose a 95% confidence level, .5 standard deviation, and a margin of error (confidence interval) of +/- 5%.

((1.96)2 x .5(.5)) / (.05)2

(3.8416 x .25) / .0025

.9604 / .0025

384.16

385 respondents are needed