title: Understanding sampling: representativeness matters.
abstract: Sampling, or selecting a group of people to represent a whole population, lies at the heart of almost all research designs. There are many ways of going about this, each of which presents its own problems. The trick is to obtain a good-sized sample that is truly representative of the population as a whole.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, Dundee.
authors.forename: J P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Davis
authors.forename: I K
authors.initials: IK
authors.lastname: Crombie
authors.forename: H T
authors.initials: HT
authors.lastname: Davies
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D018579:Patient Selection; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012107:Research Design; D018401:Sample Size