Sampling Strategy on Alcoholism in the Family

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On Methods & Strategy

The subject of study you have in mind is very interesting and to me - it appears that you are doing a case study. When we say case study, we are referring to an in-depth study of a singular subject (i.e. 1 person, 1 family, 1 group) because the focus of your study is just that subject. This therefore is not random sampling as it is focused. It is a systematised sampling wherein you have chosen a particular sample only because of the design, limits and purpose of your study. Am I correct in assuming that you want to focus on a particular family alone whereby the father or mother is an alcoholic and what you want to do is to focus on exploring the tendencies of children towards becoming alcoholics themselves? If this is the case - then sampling is not random and is non-probability in that you are reliant on available subjects and or/ utilising purposive/judgmental samples.

Before going further though, you need to determine your research method. If you are going to want to 'measure' the tendencies towards alcoholism wherein numbers are important and the population sample is large (i.e. studying the likelihood of alcoholism in children in 10 families) - then I think the ...