Procedures
How do we actually take a random sample? The specific procedures that you follow may vary depending on your resources, but all involve some type of random process. If you are using the campus directory as your sampling frame, find a random number table (they are available in the appendix of many research methods and statistics textbooks) or use the random number generator on your scientific calculator. Look at the directory and find out how many pages it has (ours has 265 pages). This directory would require 3 columns from the random number table (or a range of 1-265 on your calculator random number generator).

If your directory had 85 pages, it would require 2 columns (or range of 1-85). Look across the columns (or use the first number generated) to find the "start" page in the directory for the first participant. Once you find the page, use a similar process to select the first participant. Keep selecting pages and participants until you have the desired sample size. Your next step is to contact everyone selected and ask them to participate in your study. If you are using a list generated by the registrar, you can use a spreadsheet program to randomly select your participants from the list.