What is the difference between a random sample and representative sample?

Question

i am talking about in sociology terms please?!

Answer 1

In a random sample, everyone has the same chance of being chosen to participate... like the U.S. Census surveys. You would have a random sample if you picked out every 5th person in the phone book to be in the sample.

A representative sample is chosen from a specific group of people to represent that group.  A sample of high school students, for example, or a sample of Cosmopolitan readers.  You can pick every 5th high school student to be in a sample to represent high school students.

hope that makes sense!

Answer 2

yes....what she said....she's obviously done her research methods homework!