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).