Sample Size Determination

Before you can calculate a sample size, you need to determine a few things about
the target population and the sample you need:
1. Population Size how many total people fit your demographic? For
instance, if you want to know about mothers living in the US, your population
size would be the total number of mothers living in the US. Dont worry if you
are unsure about this number. It is common for the population to be unknown
or approximated.
2. Margin of Error (Confidence Interval) No sample will be perfect, so you
need to decide how much error to allow. The confidence interval determines
how much higher or lower than the population mean you are willing to let
your sample mean fall. If youve ever seen a political poll on the news, youve
seen a confidence interval. It will look something like this: 68% of voters said
yes to Proposition Z, with a margin of error of +/- 5%.
3. Confidence Level How confident do you want to be that the actual mean
falls within your confidence interval? The most common confidence intervals
are 90% confident, 95% confident, and 99% confident.
When X is normally distributed, the range of values between X Bar 1.96 is
called the 95% confidence interval for . The two boundaries of the interval,
X Bar1.96 and X Bar +1.96 are called the 95% confidence limits. That is,
there is a 95% chance that the following statement will we true:
X Bar 1.96 X Bar +1.96
4. Standard of Deviation How much variance do you expect in your
responses? Since we havent actually administered our survey yet, the safe
decision is to use .5 this is the most forgiving number and ensures that your
sample will be large enough.
Okay, now that we have these values defined, we can calculate our needed
sample size.

Your confidence level corresponds to a Z-score. This is a constant value needed for
this equation. Here are the z-scores for the most common confidence levels:

90% Z Score = 1.64

95% Z Score = 1.96

99% Z Score = 2.57

Determining the Sample Size Continuous Data

Formula for determining sample size is given below:

Z is the value from the table of probabilities of the standard normal

distribution for the desired confidence level (e.g., Z = 1.96 for 95% confidence)

E is the margin of error that the investigator specifies as important from a

clinical or practical standpoint.

is the standard deviation of the outcome of interest.

Example 1: We would like to start an ISP and need to estimate the average
Internet usage of households in one week for our business plan and
model. How many households must we randomly select to be 95
percent sure that the sample mean is within 1 minute of the population
mean . Assume that a previous survey of household usage has shown
= 6.95 minutes.
Solution
we are solving for the sample size .
A 95% degree confidence corresponds to

= 0.05. Each of the shaded tails in the

following figure has an area of

= 0.025. The region to the left of
and to the
right of
= 0 is 0.5 0.025, or 0.475. In the table of the standard normal ( )
distribution, an area of 0.475 corresponds to a
value of 1.96. The critical value is
therefore

= 1.96.

The margin of error

= 1 and the standard deviation
for sample size, we can calculate :

= 6.95. Using the formula

So we will need to sample at least 186 (rounded up) randomly selected households.
With this sample we will be 95 percent confident that the sample mean
within 1 minute of the true population of Internet usage.

This formula can be used when you know

will be

and want to determine the sample size

necessary to establish, with a confidence of

, the mean value
to within
You can still use this formula if you dont know your population standard
deviation
and you have a small sample size. Although it is unlikely that you
know
when the population mean is not known, you may be able to determine
from a similar process or from a pilot test/simulation.

Example 2: An investigator wants to estimate the mean systolic blood

pressure in children with congenital heart disease who are between the
ages of 3 and 5. How many children should be enrolled in the study? The
investigator plans on using a 95% confidence interval (so Z=1.96) and
wants a margin of error of 5 units. The standard deviation of systolic blood
pressure is unknown, but the investigators conduct a literature search and
find that the standard deviation of systolic blood pressures in children
with other cardiac defects is between 15 and 20. To estimate the sample
size, we consider the larger standard deviation in order to obtain the most
conservative (largest) sample size.

In order to ensure that the 95% confidence interval estimate of the mean systolic
blood pressure in children between the ages of 3 and 5 with congenital heart
disease is within 5 units of the true mean, a sample of size 62 is needed. [Note: We

always round up; the sample size formulas always generate the minimum number
of subjects needed to ensure the specified precision.]
We assumed a standard deviation of 15, the sample size would have been n=35.
Because the estimates of the standard deviation were derived from studies of
children with other cardiac defects, it would be advisable to use the larger standard
deviation and plan for a study with 62 children. Selecting the smaller sample size
could potentially produce a confidence interval estimate with a larger margin of
error.
Example 3: We want to estimate the mean systolic blood pressure of
Malaysian females. The standard deviation is around 20 mmHg and we
wish to estimate the true mean to within 5mmHg with 95% confidence.
What is the required sample size?
Answer
We are given = 20, = 5 and z = 1.96.
n=(1.96205)2=61.47women