Calculate Your Margin of Error & Sample Size

Margin of Error
Sample Size
i
The entire pool of people from which a sample is drawn.
i
The number of people who complete your survey.
i
The probability that your sample accurately represents the opinions of your population. The industry standard is 95%.
i
The margin of error is the range your sample's responses may deviate from your population's actual opinions.
Example: If 60% of coffee drinkers say they consume Starbucks, then at a 5% margin of error, 55% to 65% of the population of coffee drinkers actually drink Starbucks coffee.
±
0
%
Stronger 0%
2%
7%
Weaker 10%
Shoot for a 2-7% Margin of Error.
The lower, the better.
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i
The entire pool of people from which a sample is drawn.
i
The margin of error is the range your sample's responses may deviate from your population's actual opinions.
i
The probability that your sample accurately represents the opinions of your population. The industry standard is 95%.
i
The number of people who complete your survey.
0
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What is a margin of error?

Surveying is an excellent tool to measure attitudes, opinions, and perspectives — but it’s important to consider whether your survey sample will accurately reflect the views from the overall population. To ensure that your sample size is large enough to be representative of the overall population, you’ll want to calculate your margin of error (also called a confidence interval). The margin of error will tell you how closely your survey sample reflects the overall population.

A margin of error represents a range of values below and above the actual results from a survey.

How to interpret your margin of error

The smaller your margin of error, the more confident you can be that your survey results are representative. The larger your margin of error, the farther your results can stray from the perspective of the overall population. For example, if 75% of respondents answer "yes" to a question and our margin of error is 5%, then between 70% and 80% of the overall population also believe that the answer is "yes".

Most researchers who want statistically significant results look for a margin of error to be 5% or lower. Feel free to play around with the calculator above to determine what sample size provides you with the margin of error that best fits the needs for your unique project.