I'm writing my dissertation and my research wasn't accepted because my sample size didn't meet my Committee Chair's desire for a double digit sample size. My research involves black and white students in a math class. There were 20 white students and 2 black. My research was rejected because of the sheer number of black students. I agree that typically this is a good assessment in predicting a confidence level, however I'm no statistician and have no idea how to present a justification. In layman's terms, I'm in Tucson where only 5% of the population is black. The school has a 59% white population (591 students), however only 3.4% of the school's student population is black (34 students). In that class it seems to me that there's actually more of the school's black student population represented in this class than there is white student representation. I have no idea if this actually makes sense statistically or how it could look in running a t-test, it just seems to me that when you have more than 50% of a population represented by a sample that the number's shouldn't defeat the research. My Chair tells me to go back to Fraenkel and come back with different literature to support a different study. How can I communicate this to my committee in an acceptable scholarly way that will make sense to seasoned researchers? My committee is made up of my Dept Head and my course coordinator, so I have to have support for my explaination, but I'm certain I'm right. Please help ASAP!!!!!! Thank you.