Sixty EMT s from across Kentucky were surveyed about their protocols for transporting pediatric patients.

1. What is the sample?

2. What is the population?

3. In summarizing the results, the research would be using what type of statistics?

When we want to learn more about a big group of people, that big group is known as the population. We usually can't speak to every member of the population, so we do the next best thing - we gather a small group of those people and speak to them. This small group is known as the sample. When we get information from the sample, we then have to report our findings. These findings can either be given as descriptive statistics or inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics tell us some measurement of the sample. Inferential statistics use information from the sample to draw some conclusion about the population.

In this example, the sample consists of the 60 EMTs from across Kentucky. This is the "small group" that the researchers actually spoke to.

The population would be all of the EMTs from Kentucky. This is the "big group" that the researchers wanted to learn more about.

When summarizing results, we would be summarizing the information we got from the sample. We would use summary statistics to accomplish this.