04065 IUPAC Gold Book - multistage sampling 10.1351/goldbook.M04065 M04065 current 1 Samples taken in a series of steps with the sampling portions constituting the sample (units or increments) at each step being selected from the larger or greater number of portions of the previous step, or from a primary or composite sample. The first set of portions (units or increments) taken from the population available for sampling is the primary sample. The subsequent samples (secondary, tertiary, etc.) are the sets of subsamples, units, items, individuals or increments taken from the preceding step. The units may be different steps of multistage sampling (e.g. pallets, cases, packages). composite sample https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/C01212 primary sample https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/P04841 PAC, 1990, 62, 1193. 'Nomenclature for sampling in analytical chemistry (Recommendations 1990)' on page 1203 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac199062061193) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/M04065/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/M04065/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/M04065/plain Citation: 'multistage sampling' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.M04065 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-05-12T02:06:08+00:00