A college principal conduct an ethnographic probe into the problems faced by tribal students. Which method of sampling will be most appropriate?

A college principal conduct an ethnographic probe into the problems faced by tribal students. The most appropriate method of sampling would be Cluster sampling.

Key Points 

Cluster Sampling:

In this sampling method, the population is divided into groups that have heterogeneous characteristics also known as clusters. The cluster represents the population and the sample is chosen randomly from the cluster. This type of sampling method is heterogeneous within and homogeneous between the groups.

The tribal communities are linguistically heterogeneous in their mother tongue owing to the diverse number of tribal communities present in the country. 

Therefore, option 3 is the correct answer.

Additional Information 

1. Random Sampling: In the random sampling method each individual in the population has an equal chance of being selected in the sample. This method is used in a homogeneous population and the selection of one sample does not affect the selection of the previous sample.

2. Systematic Sampling: This method is also known as a probability sampling method. The researcher first decides the elements from a target population and then selects a random starting point. The randomly selects the sample members after deciding a fixed sampling interval. The sampling interval is determined by dividing the population by the sample size.