Research Methods - Stratified Sampling

Stratified sampling is a method used in order to get a completely representative sample. This is done by giving everyone an equal chance of being picked, but within categories. For example, if you were trying to research a class's attitude towards sociology, but the class consisted of 12 girls and 6 boys, there's more of a chance that if everyone's names were put into a hat that more girls would be picked, and therefore the boys would be under-represented. To solve this, researchers use stratified sampling, which involves controlling the factors and picking a sample which represents the target population fairly, whilst the target population is split into groups.