Q.A researcher wants to study the average monthly household expenditure of families living in a single mid-sized town. Should the researcher use the Census Method or the Sample Method? Justify your answer.

The choice depends on the population size and the cost/time trade-off — a single mid-sized town's households form a manageable but still sizeable population, and expenditure surveys are usually done by sampling.

Step 1 — Identify the population and the objective. The population is all households in a single mid-sized town, and the objective is to estimate an average (mean expenditure) — not to record every household's individual expenditure for administrative use (which is the kind of purpose that genuinely requires a census, e.g. the national Census of India).

Step 2 — Weigh census versus sample for this objective. A census would require visiting every household in the town — accurate, but very costly and time-consuming for what is only an average figure. A sample, if properly and representatively drawn, can estimate this average to a known degree of accuracy at a small fraction of the cost and time.

Step 3 — Conclude. Since the objective is an aggregate estimate (an average) rather than individual household records needed for every unit, and since cost/time matter, the Sample Method is the appropriate and standard practice.

Check. This mirrors real practice: national household expenditure surveys (such as those conducted by the National Sample Survey Office) are themselves sample surveys, never a full census, precisely for this reason.

A common wrong instinct is to assume a census is always "more accurate and therefore better" — this ignores that a census introduces its own practical burden (cost, time, and often more non-sampling error from handling a huge volume of data) and is not automatically the right choice for every kind of enquiry.