Which of the following provides you with a measure of how well your sample approximates the population?

A) generalizability
B) population
C) sampling error
D) hypothesis

Sampling error provides a measure of how well your sample approximates the population. It is the difference between the sample statistic and the population parameter. The smaller the sampling error, the more representative the sample is likely to be of the population. Generalizability refers to the extent to which the findings can be generalized to the larger population, and hypothesis is a testable statement about the relationship between two or more variables. Population refers to the entire group of individuals or items that share one or more characteristics of interest.