We determined that probability sampling would be most appropriate to use
to conduct our research.  According to Babbie (2001), the fundamental idea
behind probability sampling is...to provide useful descriptions of the total
population, a sample in which the individuals from a population contain the
same variations that exist in the population.  One reason why we chose
probability sampling as a sampling method is because, although never
perfectly representative, it is typically more representative than other types of
samples because the sampling biases are avoided.  In order to collect data, we
want to study the sixth grade students who attend school on the South side of
Bethlehem, PA.  Since we will begin with a population in mind for our study,
we would first need to choose a sampling frame, which is a list of elements
from which a probability sample is selected. Since we want a sample of
students selected from a student roster in each school, the roster would serve
as the sampling frame.  Babbie (2001) notes that populations that can be
sampled from a food organizational lists include elementary schools and high
schools.  If a random sample is selected from the student roster, the data
collected from that sample may be taken as a representative of all members, if
all members are included in the list.

    As noted previously, our area of interest will be in sixth grade students who attend school on the South side of Bethlehem.  We chose sixth graders because we figured other variables such as sex, drugs, alcohol, varsity sports, dating,
puberty, would be less influential on sixth graders than on seventh through
tenth graders.  We guesstimate that there are two public schools on the South
side of Bethlehem that house approximately 200 sixth grade students, each.
However, for research purposes, we only want to study sixty students from
each school.  Of those sixty, we want thirty students belonging to a single
parent family structure and thirty students belonging to a two parent family
structure.  The first step is to determine the family structure of each student by
passing out a simple and short demographic questionnaire that inquires about
the family structure and identifies whether there is one parent or two parents
living in their house.  Using the demographic questionnaire, we would assign
each student on the roster a number (1) or a number (2), corresponding to
whether they have one parent living at home, or two.  We would then stratify
the list again by grouping all of the (1's) and the (2's) together.  Once the
student roster has been stratified into names of students living in a single
parent household and those living in a two parent household, we can
systematically sample every Kth student in each list until our sample totals
sixty students, thirty from each list.  The same sampling method will be
applied to each school.