In research, a population refers to the entire group of individuals, objects, or events that share a specific set of characteristics relevant to a particular study. This group is the main focus of a researcher’s inquiry and from which conclusions are intended to be drawn.
Populations can be broad, such as all adults living in a country, or narrowly defined, like left-handed engineers over the age of 50 working in a specific industry. The key factor is that every member of the population fits the criteria set by the research objective.
Researchers often use samples, smaller manageable subsets of the population, to gather data, especially when studying the full population is impractical or impossible. The accuracy of the research findings depends heavily on how well the sample represents the overall population.