when you conduct a survey, how do you know how many people is enough?
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There are predetermined formulas. Obviously, in a perfect world, you would get the opinions of 100% of your target group. But you’ll have neither the funding nor the ability to get everyone to respond.
So instead, using the predetermined formulas, you’ll try to catch a percentage of the people in a certain group. Imagine you want to know what type of soda left handed red headed men like. You look up population statistics and determine that one million of those people exist. Then, you check the formula and it says that polling 2% of them will give you a good determination of what the average response is. You then find twenty thousand left handed red headed men, ask them what their favorite soda is, and you’ve got your answer.
Of course, some people or companies don’t do this. Instead, they’ll poll an abnormally small or closely situated people and them release those results, even though they’re inaccurate.
For example, is you want to find out if Americans love Star Wars or Star Trek more, but then you only advertise your poll on a Star Wars forum, your results are obviously going to be skewed.
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