The Effectiveness of Random, Consecutive Day and Constructed Week Sampling in Newspaper Content Analysis

Abstract

This study compares 20 sets each of samples of four different sizes (n=7, 14, 21 and 28) using simple random, constructed week and consecutive day samples of newspaper content. Comparisons of sample efficiency, based on the percentage of sample means in each set of 20 falling within one or two standard errors of the population mean, show the superiority of constructed week sampling.