On the Two Different Aspects of the Representative Method: The Method of Stratified Sampling and the Method of Purposive Selection

TLDR

The representative method has attracted attention from statisticians worldwide, largely due to foundational work by the International Statistical Institute and Professor A.L. Bowley, and its appeal is heightened by economic constraints and the need for rapid social statistics.

Abstract

Owing to the work of the International Statistical Institute, * and perhaps still more to personal achievements of Professor A.L. Bowley, the theory and the possibility of practical applications of the representative method has attracted the attention of many statisticians in different countries. Very probably this popularity of the representative method is also partly due to the general crisis, to the scarcity of money and to the necessity of carrying out statistical investigations connected with social life in a somewhat hasty way. The results are wanted in some few months, sometimes in a few weeks after the beginning of the work, and there is neither time nor money for an exhaustive research. But I think that if practical statistics has acquired something valuable in the representative method, this is due primarily to Professor A.L. Bowley, who not only was one of the first to apply this method in practice,t but also wrote a very fundamental memoirt giving the theory of the method. Since then the representative method has been often applied in different countries a.'l.d for different purposes. My chief topic being the theory of the representative method, I shall not go into its history and shall not quote the examples of its practical application