Define population

Population is all the organism that both belongs to the same species and lives in the same geographic area. Population which we want to gain information about is called target population. A target population is the people or objects from which you wish to gain information. The  target population can be houses in a street, trees in an area, schools in a community, shops in a town,  etc.

 For example our target population is people. In research we can’t do with all the people. We have to choose a sample, a selected people from the target population.  An ideal sample has similar characteristics in similar proportions to those in the target population. This is called a representative sample. Also the method of sampling needs to be unbiased.

We need to know the characteristics of the target population before we can select a representative sample. The people in the target population are called the sampling frame. The characteristics of a sampling frame concern information about the people. These may be: Gender Ages Marital Status Economic Groupings The importance of the characteristics within the sampling frame will depend on the subject of the survey.