Researchers were interested in teenagers' video gaming habits. They asked participants to keep a structured one-week digital diary. In their diaries, the teenagers recorded how many hours they spent gaming, the genres of the games played, and who they interacted with online.
There were 120 participants in the study: 30 teenagers aged 15–16 years from each of four different secondary schools in the Nottinghamshire area. There were equal numbers of male and female participants.
Before the study began, the researchers devised a coding scheme to analyse the diaries. This included the following categories: total weekly hours; preference for multiplayer vs single-player games; and type of in-game communication used.
The researchers used random sampling to obtain equal numbers of male and female participants aged 15–16 years from the four schools. Outline how random sampling could have been carried out in this study.
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