[3] In many practical situations the frame is a matter of choice to the survey planner, and sometimes a critical one.
[1] For instance, an electoral register might include name and sex; this information can be used to ensure that a sample taken from that frame covers all demographic categories of interest.
For example, in an opinion poll, possible sampling frames include an electoral register or a telephone directory.
This offers some advantages: such a frame would include people who have recently moved and are not yet on the list frames discussed above, and it may be easier to use because it doesn't require storing data for every unit in the population, only for a smaller number of clusters.
The sampling frame must be representative of the population and this is a question outside the scope of statistical theory demanding the judgment of experts in the particular subject matter being studied.
In fact, in 1703, when Jacob Bernoulli proposed to Gottfried Leibniz the possibility of using historical mortality data to predict the probability of early death of a living man, Gottfried Leibniz recognized the problem in replying:[6] Nature has established patterns originating in the return of events but only for the most part.
New illnesses flood the human race, so that no matter how many experiments you have done on corpses, you have not thereby imposed a limit on the nature of events so that in the future they could not vary.Leslie Kish posited four basic problems of sampling frames:[7] Problems like those listed can be identified by the use of pre-survey tests and pilot studies.