Opportunity sampling

Opportunity is essentially where we sample people who are easy to survey, as well as that they need to be available at the time of the study.

For example, if we are doing a survey of people’s opinions on a certain topic, we might go to a shopping centre and ask people who are there to be in our sample, because, perhaps, the shopping centre is the easiest place for us to find people to survey, and they are available at the time of the study.

Opportunity sampling is where we select members of the population who are easy to survey and available at the time of the study.

Advantages of opportunity sampling

• It’s by far the easiest sampling method to implement, because we just need to find people who are easy to survey and available at the time of the study (i.e. anyone off the street)
• It being easier also makes it the cheapest sampling method to implement, because we don’t need to spend time and money on finding a more representative sample of the population or getting a perfectly random sample of the population.

Disadvantages of opportunity sampling

• It is very likely to give us a biased sample, because we are only sampling people who are easy to survey and available at the time of the study, which may not be representative of the population as a whole (e.g. if we go to a shopping centre, we might only be sampling people who are from a certain area, or from a certain age group, etc.).
• It also means the sample will not be very representative of the population, because we are only sampling people who are easy to survey and available at the time of the study, which may not be representative of the population as a whole (e.g. if we go to a shopping centre, we might only be sampling people who are from a certain area, or from a certain age group, etc.).
• It can be difficult to implement, if we can’t find people who are easy to survey and available at the time of the study (e.g. if we are doing a survey on a certain topic, and we can’t find anyone who is interested in that topic or available at the time of the study).

When to use opportunity sampling

It’s only really a good idea to use opportunity sampling when either:

• We are doing a ‘preliminary’ study, and we just want to get some initial data to work with, and we don’t care about the accuracy of the results (e.g. we might be doing a survey on a certain topic, and we just want to get some initial data to work with, and we don’t care about the accuracy of the results).
• We may not have the time or resources to do a proper study using a better sampling method.
• We can use opportunity sample in conjunction with another sampling method
  • For example, we may use stratified sampling to select a sample of the population, and then use opportunity sampling to only survey people from that sample who are easy to survey and available at the time.
• To get a very rough idea of the results.