It seems like your question is, what is the benefit of education? That is such a broad question, I suspect you are looking at a specific level of education. You will see the most diversity of age and level of education beyond high school, into college. Basic college education, which in the US is 2 or 4 years, should require information about age and other educational programs. The benefits of a college education would be different for an 18-year-old and a 45-year-old.
There are some good statistics on the income differences between high school graduates and college graduates. Most studies show college graduates earn about a million dollars more in their lifetime than high school graduates. What we don't know is how much the education itself contributes to that income difference versus ability, family support, family finances, and other variables.
It's a good question.
It depends on the nature of your problem! There is no hard and fast rule for it!
If you want to compare the cost and benefit of education at different levels, you need to select respondents that fit into the different levels. It all depends on what you want to explore. Good luck with your study!
I think it depends on objective of the study. If the objective is to find out the correlates of cost and benifits of education, selection of respondent on the basis of age and educational levels can be appropriate. In that condition, the association of cost and benefit of education to age and educational level of learner can be tested.
If you are analyzing the cost and benefits of education at different levels, of course yes. If your focus is only secondary education, for example, you can select only those age-group students only. All depends on what you specific goals are..
Education has several levels/layers and each comes with its cost and measurable benefit, it is hence essential that we do select respondents on the basis of age and educational level in order to analyse those specific variables of cost and benefit
Your Focus appears to be on the cost and benefit of education to a specific population. Naturally occurring populations are mixed in terms of age and education levels. You should not select your respondents based on age and education; all should participate without bias. If you want to establish whether there are differences, you should disaggregate the categories at the data analysis stage. My thoughts!
If your objectives demand to analyze the cost and benefits based on age and education levels then you should select the respondents on the defined categories based. You can categories them to analyze accordingly.
Dear Joseph Kipkorir! The way you have recommended it may lead researcher into collecting data from wrong sample! This is not the smart way though correct if you are doing research in large scale!
For academic research you need to target your population. Otherwise, the students lose time in data collection and analysis in several rounds.
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