Funding for fine arts The band director at a high school wants to estimate the percentage

of parents who support a decrease in the budget for fine arts. Because many parents attend

the school’s annual musical, the director surveys the first 30parents who arrive at the

show. Explain how bias in the sampling method could affect the estimate.

Short Answer

Expert verified

We will (in this situation) constantly underestimate the true unemployment rate because the entire population is involved. As a result, the sample should contain fewer unemployed people than the whole population.

Step by step solution

01

Given information

We have to find the bias in the sampling method could affect the estimate.

02

Explanation

A convenience sample is frequently since persons who never go to the mall have no opportunity of being included in the sample and may have substantially different characteristics than those who do. An unemployed person, for example, will be less inclined to visit a mall because he or she will have no income and will therefore strive to minimise his or her expenditures. As a result, we would expect the sample to have fewer unemployed people than the overall population, implying that we will (in this case) constantly underestimate the true unemployment rate.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

A local news agency conducted a survey about unemployment by randomly dialing phone

numbers during the work day until it gathered responses from 1000 adults in its state. In

the survey, 19% of those who responded said they were not currently employed. In reality,

only 6% of the adults in the state were not currently employed at the time of the survey.

Which of the following best explains the difference in the two percentages?

a. The difference is due to sampling variability. We shouldn’t expect the results of a

random sample to match the truth about the population every time.

b. The difference is due to response bias. Adults who are employed are likely to lie and

say that they are unemployed.

c. The difference is due to undercoverage bias. The survey included only adults and did

not include teenagers who are eligible to work.

d. The difference is due to nonresponse bias. Adults who are employed are less likely to

be available for the sample than adults who are unemployed.

e. The difference is due to voluntary response. Adults are able to volunteer as a member

of the sample.

When we take a census, we attempt to collect data from

a. a stratified random sample.

b. every individual chosen in a simple random sample.

c. every individual in the population.

d. a voluntary response sample.

e. a convenience sample.

Checking for bias Comment on each of the following as a potential sample survey

question. Is the question clear? Is it slanted toward a desired response?

a. Which of the following best represents your opinion on gun control?

i. The government should confiscate our guns.

ii. We have the right to keep and bear arms.

b. A freeze in nuclear weapons should be favored because it would begin a much-needed

process to stop everyone in the world from building nuclear weapons now and reduce

the possibility of nuclear war in the future. Do you agree or disagree?

Far from home? A researcher wants to estimate the average distance that students at a large community college live from campus. To find out, she surveys a simple random sample of students from the registrar’s database.

a. Will the researcher’s sample result be exactly the same as the true population's mean? Explain your answer.

b. Which would be more likely to produce a sample result closer to the true population value: an SRS of 100students or an SRS of 50students? Explain your answer.

A study of treatments for angina (pain due to low blood supply to the heart) compared

bypass surgery, angioplasty, and use of drugs. The study looked at the medical records

of thousands of angina patients whose doctors had chosen one of these treatments. It

found that the average survival time of patients given drugs was the highest. What do

you conclude?

a. This study proves that drugs prolong life and should be the treatment of choice.

b. We can conclude that drugs prolong life because the study was a comparative

experiment.

c. We can’t conclude that drugs prolong life because the patients were volunteers.

d. We can’t conclude that drugs prolong life because the groups might differ in ways

besides the treatment.

e. We can’t conclude that drugs prolong life because no placebo was used.

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