Exam 5: Data Collection and Sampling

The manager of the customer service division of a major consumer electronics company is interested in determining whether the customers who have purchased a videocassette recorder over the past 12 months are satisfied with their products. If there are 4 different brands of videocassette recorders made by the company, the best sampling strategy would be to use a:

____________________ error is due to mistakes made in the acquisition of data.

The personnel director at a large company studied the eating habits of the company's employees. The director watched and recorded whether each employee brought his/her own lunch to work, ate at the company cafeteria, or went out to lunch. What method of data collection was used here?

Which of the following situations lends itself to cluster samples?

In a(n) ____________________ study, there is no attempt to control factors that might influence the variable of interest.

A regular feature in many newspapers asks readers to respond via e-mail to a survey question. The percentages of yes and no responses are usually reported the following day. Should we ignore the results of these surveys? Explain.

The response rate of a survey is the proportion of all people who were selected but did not complete the survey.

Describe the difference between an observational study and an experimental study.

____________________ sampling is particularly useful when it is difficult or costly to develop a complete list of the population members.

Give three important points to consider when designing a questionnaire.

Which of the following describes selection bias?

What is meant by a self-selected sample? Why are self-selected samples not desirable?

Two types of interviews that are used to collect data are ____________________ interviews and ____________________ interviews.

Which of the following types of samples is almost always biased?

A self-selected sample represents the sampled population but not the target population.

When responses are not obtained from some members of the sample, bias is introduced.

Briefly discuss three methods of conducting a survey of people.

Which method of data collection is involved when a researcher counts and records the number of students wearing backpacks on campus in a given day?

A pharmaceutical company interested in measuring how often physicians prescribe a certain drug has selected a simple random sample from each of two groups: M.D. (Medical Doctors) and D.O. (Osteopaths). What is this type of sampling called?

The difference between a sample mean and the population mean is called: