Purposive Sample

A purposive sample, also referred to as a judgmental or expert sample, is a type of nonprobability sample. The main objective of a purposive sample is to produce a sample that can be logically assumed to be representative of the population. This is often accomplished by applying expert knowledge of the population to select in a nonrandom manner a sample of elements that represents a cross-section of the population.

In probability sampling, each element in the population has a known nonzero chance of being selected through the use of a random selection procedure. In contrast, nonprobability sampling does not involve known nonzero probabilities of selection. Rather, subjective methods are used to decide which elements should be included in the sample. In nonprobability sampling, the population may ...