What are Survey Sample Sizes & How to Find Your Sample Size

If you're a writer like me, it won't come as a surprise to you that my least favorite subject in school was math.

And although many people don't like math, in business, understanding and collecting data is reliant on this subject.

Even when you're in customer service, one of the key roles of customer support is conducting surveys with statistical significance.

In this post, we'll help you learn what survey sample size you might need to have a statistically significant result from your surveys.

These are called sample sizes because they are only a small representation of a larger group of people who you want to know more about. You can choose who to include in your sample or you can conduct a random sample where respondents are chosen by chance.

Survey sample sizes that are too small may include a disproportionate amount of outliers. When you try to gather responses from too many people, although the results will be more accurate, the study will become too complex, expensive, and time-consuming.

That being said, how many people should you include in your sample? Let me warn you: the sample size formula can be a little overwhelming. But we'll work through it together. Let's review it below.

Sample Size Formula

I know that looks daunting….The good news is that you won't have to do this math yourself. There are plenty of sample size calculators, including one from HubSpot in our A/B Testing Kit. However, it's a good idea to be familiar with this formula and what it means.

• z = z-score. The number of standard deviations a given proportion is away from the mean.
• p = standard of deviation. The confidence level you can have that the population would select an answer within a certain range.
• e = margin of error (percentage in decimal form). The percentage that tells you how much you can expect your survey results to reflect the views of the overall population.
• N = population size. The total number of people in the group you're trying to study.

To find your z-score, use the table below.

Essentially, your sample size is decided based on the population, how confident you want to be in your results, and the margin of error you'd like to allow for. Let's look at an example.

Below, I used a sample size calculator and I put in that my population size is 10,000, and I'd like to be 95% confident in my results within a 5% margin of error. The calculator then used the formula above and told me my sample size needs to be at least 370 people.

Now that we know the formula (and how to find a calculator to do it for you), let's review some steps that you should take to ensure your results are statistically significant.

1. Know your population.

The population size in your formula should be the number of the entire group of people you want to understand. If you want to know how many people in the U.S. like your product, you obviously can't survey over 300 million people. However, it's important to know the total number of people that you want to understand -- whether it's people in a country, from a certain company, or in a certain profession.

2. Have a high confidence level with a low margin of error.

When you have your results, you want to be confident that most of your population would agree with the results, with a low margin of error. Usually, the margin of error is around 5% or lower and the confidence level is around 95% or higher. This would mean that your results can give or take 5% on the top or bottom and that you're confident you would get the same results 95% of the time.

3. Plan for a response rate of about 20-30%.

Once you've put your information into a sample size calculator and figured out how large your sample size needs to be, it's important to plan for your response rate to be around 20-30%. Of course, not everyone you send a survey to will respond, so you want to account for that. In fact, an even more conservative approach would be to account for a 10-15% response rate, meaning you should send your survey to many more people than the required sample size to ensure you receive that many responses.

We know that survey sample sizes can be overwhelming, but it's important for you to understand how confident you can be in the results of your surveys, and within what margin of error. Luckily, there are plenty of survey templates and sample size calculators available to help you get started.