For the Learning in Communities project in Rhode Island, a nonrandom (“convenience”)
sampling methodology was used to generate phone numbers for a telephone survey of parents.
First, we conducted a demographic analysis of the community we planned to research, in order to
understand the characteristics of area residents. We selected six schools that were likely to be
representative of the community, as the demographics of students in these schools were similar to
the demographics of the larger community. We next identified ways to get the best cross-section
of students within these schools. We determined that students’ lunch period was the best
opportunity to reach a good cross-section of students, and this is likely to be the case at other
schools as well.