Meaning & use
unrepresentative sample
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Meanings
nouncountabletechnical
A group of people or items chosen for study that does not match the larger group it is meant to stand for.
Grammar: Countable: 'an unrepresentative sample', 'unrepresentative samples'.
Patterns
- an unrepresentative sample of something
- a sample that is unrepresentative of something
- draw an unrepresentative sample
Interviewing shoppers on a weekday morning gave an unrepresentative sample of the city's workers.
The poll was based on an unrepresentative sample, so its results were misleading.
An unrepresentative sample of patients made the drug look safer than it is.
nouncountabletechnical
A small amount of a substance or set of data that does not fairly show what the whole is like.
Grammar: Countable and often followed by 'of': an unrepresentative sample of the soil.
Patterns
- an unrepresentative sample of soil
- test an unrepresentative sample
They tested an unrepresentative sample of the soil, taken only from the dry corner of the field.
The lab warned that an unrepresentative sample could hide contamination elsewhere.
Word forms
| plural | unrepresentative samples |
|---|
Common combinations
- an unrepresentative sample of the population
- The survey used an unrepresentative sample of the population, mostly students.
- a biased and unrepresentative sample
- Reviewers rejected the study for its biased and unrepresentative sample.
- draw an unrepresentative sample
- If you draw an unrepresentative sample, no statistical test can rescue the results.
- unrepresentative sample size
- A tiny unrepresentative sample size makes the findings hard to trust.
Synonyms and how they differ
- biased sample
- Emphasizes that the selection was skewed in a particular direction; an unrepresentative sample may be skewed for other reasons, such as being too small.
- skewed sample
- Common in data writing; it stresses the uneven shape of the data rather than the mismatch with the whole group.
Opposites
Word family
- representative adjective
- Typical of a larger group; the opposite of unrepresentative.
- representativeness noun
- The quality of fairly standing for a larger group.
- sample noun
- A small part chosen to show what the whole is like.
Commonly confused: unrepresentative sample or random sample? unrepresentative sample or small sample?
unrepresentative sample vs random sample
A random sample is chosen by chance, but it can still be unrepresentative if the list it comes from is incomplete.
unrepresentative sample vs small sample
A small sample may still be representative; size and representativeness are different problems.
Practice
Which sentence uses the term correctly?
Choose one answer.
The standard pattern is 'unrepresentative of something'. The other prepositions do not fit this adjective in academic writing.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “unrepresentative sample”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.