6 ms·

Yes. 130 people is sufficient for a good sample.

mateo411 5y ago
If we use a 95% confidence interval and we have a sample size of 258 then the margin of error is around 4.5%. If the sample size is 130, then the margin of error will be around 6.5%. That's a little high, but probably still good enough.
- danenania 5y ago
  The sample size you need also depends on variance and the presence of confounding variables. It’s impossible to say whether n is “big enough” in the abstract; it depends completely on what you are measuring and how you measure it.
  - mateo411 5y ago
    We are sampling a Bernoulli distribution for measuring burn out. A software developer could be burnt out/ not burnt out. The variance of a Bernoulli distribution is P(1-P), which is (.83)(.17), since 83% of the respondents answered that they were burnt out.
    - danenania 5y ago
      But why are they "burned out"? Is it because they're a software developer or because they live in an advanced post-industrial civilization in the midst of a global pandemic? Could they feel burned out today but not tomorrow? Has the sun come out in the UK at any time in the last two weeks? Do all the participants even agree on the definition of "burnout"? Were there five other similar studies done that we don't know about that were discarded because they didn't produce the desired click-baity conclusion? I could go on and on.
      - mateo411 5y ago
        It's important that the 258 were uniformly drawn from the population of software engineers in the UK. It's not important whether the sun came out in the last two weeks or not, unless we were trying to measure the weather affecting burn out. It's true different people might have a different interpretation of burn out, but it should be pretty similar to other people. I'm going to assume all people who took the study understand the idea behind burn out. The point of the poll isn't to answer why but to measure the percentage of burn out with some degree of accuracy. The margin of error in this poll was 4.5%. That's how all yes/no polling works. We don't know that 83% of people are burnt out, but we are reasonably confident that 78% to 88% of people are burnt out.
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If we use a 95% confidence interval and we have a sample size of 258 then the margin of error is around 4.5%. If the sample size is 130, then the margin of error will be around 6.5%. That's a little high, but probably still good enough.

danenania 5y ago
The sample size you need also depends on variance and the presence of confounding variables. It’s impossible to say whether n is “big enough” in the abstract; it depends completely on what you are measuring and how you measure it.
- mateo411 5y ago
  We are sampling a Bernoulli distribution for measuring burn out. A software developer could be burnt out/ not burnt out. The variance of a Bernoulli distribution is P(1-P), which is (.83)(.17), since 83% of the respondents answered that they were burnt out.
  - danenania 5y ago
    But why are they "burned out"? Is it because they're a software developer or because they live in an advanced post-industrial civilization in the midst of a global pandemic? Could they feel burned out today but not tomorrow? Has the sun come out in the UK at any time in the last two weeks? Do all the participants even agree on the definition of "burnout"? Were there five other similar studies done that we don't know about that were discarded because they didn't produce the desired click-baity conclusion? I could go on and on.
    - mateo411 5y ago
      It's important that the 258 were uniformly drawn from the population of software engineers in the UK. It's not important whether the sun came out in the last two weeks or not, unless we were trying to measure the weather affecting burn out. It's true different people might have a different interpretation of burn out, but it should be pretty similar to other people. I'm going to assume all people who took the study understand the idea behind burn out. The point of the poll isn't to answer why but to measure the percentage of burn out with some degree of accuracy. The margin of error in this poll was 4.5%. That's how all yes/no polling works. We don't know that 83% of people are burnt out, but we are reasonably confident that 78% to 88% of people are burnt out.

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