Sampling and Democracy

Representativeness in the First United States Surveys

Bibliographic Data

ID4516604
AuthorsEmmanuel Didier (0000-0002-0858-4771, Max Planck Society, corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume15
Issue3
Pages427-445
Publication date2002-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience in Context (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0269-8897 • E-ISSN: 1474-0664
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0269889702000558
OpenAlexW2050830375
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited1

Argument How did statistical representativeness first appear in the United States? To answer this question we turn to the archives of the Department of Agriculture. Since the 1860s, agricultural statisticians have been working to come up with representative groups of farmers able to answer questions about crop production. The archives describe the methods and tools used to devise representative samples. But the explicit justifications of why a given sample is particularly representative are nearly always missing. Where can we find explanations for why one sampling method is representative and not another? Where can we find the why when we have only the how? This paper argues that we can turn to the theorists of democracy for answers, because selecting a sample and selecting a group of representatives have a lot in common

Agriculture · Archaeology · Democracy · Geography · Operations research · Political science · Politics · Representativeness heuristic · Statistics · Telecommunications · Census and Population Estimation · Chemistry · Computer Science · Law · Mathematics

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