What Is Area Sampling?

The area sampling design constitutes geographical clusters. That is when the research pertains to populations within identifiable geographical areas such as counties, city blocks or particular boundaries within a locality, area sampling can be done. Thus area sampling is a form of cluster sampling within an area.

Sampling the needs of consumer before opening a 24-hour convenience store in a particular part of town would involve area sampling.  Location plans for retail stores, advertisements focused specifically on local population and television and radio programs beamed at specific areas could all use an area sampling design to gather information on the interests, attitudes, predispositions and behaviours of the local area people.

Area sampling is less expensive than most other probability sampling designs and it is not dependent on a population frame. a city map showing the blocks of the city would be adequate information to allow a researcher to take a sample of the blocks and obtain data from the residents therein. This plan is resorted to when further information is needed from a subset of the group from which some information has already been collected for the same study. A sampling design where initially a sample is used in a study to collect some preliminary information of the interest.