3.3 Research population andsampling size
The sugarcane growers have been regarded as researchers for this
studysince they engage directly and observe climate change and are well
aware of the sugarcane production situation in the region,which consists
of cities and rural and coastal areas. There was no restrictionof age
and gender of farmers in the selection of respondents. Sugarcane is
produced in 23 areas in Sindhbut only five were targeted to reach the
respondents because of accessibility problems. Weonly visited Hyderabad,
Thurparker, Sukkur, Thatta, and Dadin, the main sugarcane producing
areas. We used purposive sampling to target only knowledgeable farmers
with at least three years of sugarcane farming experience. While the
snowball sampling approach was used to reach the maximum number of
respondents, some respondents suggested other people who worked in
sugarcane farms and/or did sugarcane farming. Due to accessibility and
convenience problems, 100 farmers were selected. Only 55 farmers replied
to the survey, including farmers who owned the land, farmers who
recently did sugarcane farming, and experiencedlabourerswho work in
sugarcane farms.
The following formula was used to reach the actual targeted population:
Sample size = (Zscore)2× Standard deviation × (1 −
Std.Dev) ÷ (margin of error)2
whereZ score for a 95% confidence level is 1.96 when the deviation is
0.5, whereas the margin of error depends on the will of the researcher.
Due to complexity issues, the original formula is written whereas the
driven value for the formula is 384 when the confidence level is 95%,
and the margin of error is 5% (Saunders 2011).
Calculation: 384 × 100 ÷ 384+100 − 1 = 78 (i.e., the sampling size for
this study).