Insensitivity To Sample Size

Insensitivity to sample size is a cognitive bias that causes people to disregard sample size when judging the probability of gaining an accurate sampling without comparing the size of the sample to the population being sampled.

For example, a sociologist is sampling attitudes toward higher education in an specific population of 10,000 people. It isn't realistic to consider polling each member of the population so the researcher selects a sample group that hopefully represents the views of the population. If they went out to the community and talked to a mere 5 people randomly it is unlikely that that small a sample would yield a realistic answer - this would be insensitivity to sample size. Assessing the views of 200 people would yield a much more realistic sampling and be more representative of the population.