Modeling the effect of quota sampling on online fieldwork efficiency: An analysis of the connection between uncertainty and sample usage

Carlos Ochoa and Josep Miquel Porcar

Market, Opinion and Social Research is increasingly relying on non-probabilistic online panels as data sources and quota sampling as the default sampling method.

Introduction

Probability sampling has enjoyed a privileged position for good survey practice since the beginning of last century. Jerzy Neyman (1934) decisively contributed to this situation with his theory for stratified and cluster sampling based on the randomization distribution. However, at about that same time, the first efforts were made to develop alternative non-random quota sampling methods.

Quota samples are non-probability samples that are controlled to be distributed more like a random sample from a population would be (Dodge, 2003).

Since the initial efforts, several cases in which non-random samples failed to provide satisfactory estimates for variables in a population...

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