Algebra II : Experiment Design and Identifying Bias
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Example Question #11 : Experiment Design And Identifying Bias
A student wants to find out whether mothers in his city support a local initiative to redesign the city’s largest park. He decides to conduct a poll on this question by calling the home phone numbers of all 200 students in his private high school, asking to speak to their mothers, and recording their responses as YES, NO or NO PREFERENCE in a chart. He doesn’t have time to make 400 calls, so he enlists three friends, who are also students at his school, to help make calls and record answers.
100 calls are not answered, and during 50 calls no mothers are home. The remaining 250 calls successfully reach mothers: 200 of the 250 calls are recorded as YES, 25 are recorded as NO and 25 are recorded as NO PREFERENCE. The student concludes that most mothers in the city support the initiative.
Which of the following forms of bias does NOT appear in this study?
Sampling bias
Measurement bias
Interviewer bias
Response bias
Measurement bias
Sampling bias occurs when populations are included or excluded from study participation in a way that systematically affects the sample’s representativeness of the population the researcher seeks to gain knowledge about. Given the small population of students at the high school, it is highly unlikely that all mothers in the city are represented in the sample; and given that the high school is both small and private, it is unlikely that the sample is representative of all mothers in the city. Interviewer bias occurs when there is a possibility that an interviewer may behave in ways that consciously or unconsciously influence respondents to give answers skewed towards the interviewer’s perspective or interests. Response bias occurs when respondents consciously or subconsciously give responses they believe the interviewer wants to hear. Interviewer and response bias may result from the fact that the students attend the same schools that the respondents’ children attend, and the fact that the small size of the high school increases the likelihood of personal connections existing between the students and the respondents. The description provides no evidence of measurement bias, or systematic incorrect measurement, in this study.
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