a The location where a survey is conducted may cause a sample to be biased.
B
b A survey question is biased when it contains an assumption that may or may not be true.
C
c A sample is biased when it is not representative of the population.
A
a See solution.
B
b See solution.
C
c See solution.
Practice makes perfect
a We are given information about a travel agent who wants to determine whether France is a popular vacation place for young adults. Let's consider the given factor.
The agent interviews people at an international airport.
The travel agent wants to conduct a survey. We will determine how the given factor could create bias in the survey results. Recall that samples are biased when they are not representative of the population.
Since the people are surveyed at the international airport, they are more likely to go on vacation to another country — such as France. Also, there could be a lot of respondents that are not young adults at the airport. Therefore, we can conclude that the location where the survey is conducted can cause the sample to be biased.
b Similar to Part A, we will determine how the given factor introduces bias. Let's consider the given survey question.
Survey Question
Would you prefer to vacation in France or in Italy?
A survey question is biased when it contains assumptions that may or may not be true. The choice in the given questions limits the options of respondents to only two answers, when neither of them might be true. For example, they may want to vacation in Sweden, Poland, or other states within the United States.
c Just as in Parts A and B, let's consider the given factor.
Of the people interviewed, 86 % took a French class in high school.
The respondents who took a French class are clearly overrepresented among the other members of the sample. They are more likely to want to vacation in France than people that have not studied the language.
