After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Define sampling distribution.

2. Compare theoretical and experimental sampling strategies.

3. Identify three characteristics of the sampling distribution of the sample mean.

4. Calculate the mean and standard error of a sampling distribution of the sample mean and draw the shape of this distribution.

5. Explain the relationship between standard error, standard deviation, and sample size.

6. Compute z transformations for the sampling distribution of the sample mean.

7. Summarize the standard error of the mean in APA format.

8. Compute the estimate for the standard error of the mean using SPSS.