Producing Data

3. Sources of Data

3.2 Generating your own data

Often you have specific questions that you want to ask. In attempting to answer these questions you might need to generate data. The type of questions that you ask can influence the methods that you use to try to answer the questions. Some questions can be answered by observation, while other questions can be answered by experimentation. Usually you do not have the resources to involve all members of a population in your search for answers. For this reason, you would limit your study to a sample of the population.

In the following sections we will look at generating data through observation and experimentation. Before we do, though, we first need to have a clear understanding of the concepts 'population' and 'sample'.

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