The Influence of Work Flexibility on Performance of Academic Staff in

1.2 Sample Frame

A sampling frame indicates the distribution of the populace from which a sample is picked. Sampling frames have the sampling units in a populace. Usually, a physical list is not commonly available. Instead, researchers often compile an alternative list (Nachmias & Nachmias, 2003). The research integrated a sampling frame of all academic staff in all the 31 chartered public universities as of December 2016. An alternative list of staff on the university‟s payroll was the key document to use in availing a sample frame for the process.

2.3. Sampling Technique

The research applied a Multi-stage sampling procedure which used simple random sampling at each stage. Specifically, a Two-stage sampling procedure was applied due to the primary sample units existing in the secondary sample unit. The primary sample units entailed members of the academic staff of public universities in Kenya and the secondary unit was the public university in Kenya). The sample sizes were determined using sampling techniques as discussed subsequently.

3.4.1 Sample Size Determination

The multi-stage sampling procedure was applied. The initial stage had a sample of universities whose academic staff was to participate in the research determined using Nassiuma‟s (2000), formula. The equation is below.

(1)

Where: n = sample size ; N = Population size.

The size thus is; c = co-variance (21% ≤ c ≤ 30%) e = standard error (2% ≤ e ≤ 5%)

The derived size of the sample for use is thus 11 Universities for the secondary unit. Selecting a single university for pretesting, the questionnaire was applied and this was excluded from the final sample as guided by Mugenda and Mugenda (2003). To find out the total academic staff from the 10 institutions meant to participate in the research, the same formula by Naissuma (2000) was applied. The coefficient of variation was raised to 30% and the standard error decreased to 2% to make sure that the sample range was sufficiently wide to enhance better generalization. Lesser standard errors are perceived as better due to their capability to enable greater representation of the sample in the whole population. The above ensures accuracy in the testing of the hypothesis. The number of academic staff from the select universities was equally determined on the premise of the formula by Naissuma (2000). The margin of error of 0.02 was derived and the total staff picked was, the number of staff selected to participate in the study was 206.

(2)

3.4.2 Sampling Techniques

Simple random sampling was used in the first stage. Each chartered public university in Kenya stood an equal chance of being picked. In the second sampling phase, the number of respondents from the 10 picked universities was derived based on the size of the total staff in each university as compared to the sum of staff in all the ten public universities. Respondents were later picked using a simple random sampling technique.