New Mexico Public School System: A Case Study

The target population for this research is going to be high school students who are enrolled in a public school system in New Mexico. The ages of the high school students will be 13-18 years old. The sample size will be 600 students. The method to pick the students will be a multistage cluster sampling. The first stage will be dividing New Mexico into sections. I will do this by separating New Mexico into its 33 counties. There will be five counties selected out of the 33 counties. Once the five counties have been chosen, the second stage will be to randomly pick two cities in each county. The third and final stage of the cluster sampling will be to select three schools that are part of the public school system in the selected cities. With all three stages, the way I will randomize the selection is to assign each county, city and school a number. Then I will use a computer’s random number table to select the counties, cities and schools …show more content…
During the process of administering the survey, while the students turn in the survey I will choose 20 students from every high school. While they are turning in the survey, I will use systematic random sampling by selecting every nth student and ask them if they would be interesting in participating in my study. If they say “yes”, I will ask them in private if they smoke cannabis or if they don’t. This will determine which group they will be placed in for the study, this will also make sure that I will not get all nonsmokers or all smokers. If the adolescence agrees to the study and there is roughly enough smokers and nonsmokers, I will collect their basic information so that I can send them a follow-up in the mail. Using both a multistage cluster sampling and a systematic random sampling will help keep bias out of choosing the students. These methods will provide a generalizable sample of New