No! This is not a blog post about some male enhancement product. Today we’re writing about research.

Simply put, when it comes to conducting research, the number of individuals contacted in any form of research study truly does matter.

When considering any target market it is extremely rare that you’ll be able to gather data from every single member of the targeted population. Hence, what you’ll do instead is gather info from a representative sample group of the entire population as a whole.

When defining a sample group, typically you can include people based upon a variety of factors, with demographic information (such as age, sex, education, etc.) and psychographic information (personality types, attitudes, lifestyles, etc.) the most common defining factors for inclusion.

However, even if you successfully select a representative sampling of your entire population, if you do NOT collect data from enough individuals, you run the risk that your research results will be statistically less and less valid (or applicable) across the population as a whole.

Ergo, the smaller the population, the greater your sample size needs to be (percentage-wise) to generate statistically valid results. Conversely, if you have a very large population to draw from (say the population of the United States), then the sample size can be much, much smaller on a percentage basis. That’s why you’ll often read about national U.S. surveys that have a confidence level of +/- 3% or 5% yet involved less than 5,000 participants.

So . . . at the end of the day, when it comes to research, remember that sample size does matter.