If they are randomly drawn and large enough.
There are two equivalent ways of defining a simple random sample from a larger population. One definition is that every member of the population has the same probability of being included in the sample. The second is that, if you generate all possible samples of the given size from the population, then each such sample has the same probability of being selected for use.
Samples
If repeated samples are taken from a population, then they will not have the same mean each time. The mean itself will have some distribution. This will have the same mean as the population mean and the standard deviation of this statistic is the standard deviation of the mean.
different samples of respondents from the population complete the survey over a time period
There are 324,632 possible samples.
Data from random samples will not always include the same values. Values are chosen randomly and they may or may not be the same. So means will vary among random samples.
Will a sample descriptive statistics accurately estimate the underlying population's parameters?
The unit of analysis that most sociologists study are samples. Samples portray the characteristics of the larger population from which the samples are taken.Reference:Vissing, Y. (2011). Introduction to Sociology. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.
The "average" of the population of samples is the same as their "mean".
Yes you can.
A population of animals is a group of animals of the same kind, same species, have the same characteristics, living in the same habitat. For example, a population of frogs at a pond. A population of squirrels in a tree.
A sampling variability is the tendency of the same statistic computed from a number of random samples drawn from the same population to differ.
Provided the samples are independent, the Central Limit Theorem will ensure that the sample means will be distributed approximately normally with mean equal to the population mean.
There are two equivalent ways of defining a simple random sample from a larger population. One definition is that every member of the population has the same probability of being included in the sample. The second is that, if you generate all possible samples of the given size from the population, then each such sample has the same probability of being selected for use.
Samples
representative
It is the sampling distribution of that variable.