In most situations, it is impossible to study an entire population. We typically study a subset of people drawn from a larger population and use inferential statistics to make an inference from the sample back to the population. The validity of that inference depends on how representative the sample or subset is of the population from which it is drawn. Our goal, as researchers, is to obtain the most representative sample that we can. Some sampling strategies can get us pretty close to the population, others have problems that might result in a biased sample. As we learn about different sampling strategies, let's use the population drawn below as our starting point.