1.19 Opinion polls. Pollsters regularly conduct opinion polls to NW determine th

Question

1.19 Opinion polls. Pollsters regularly conduct opinion polls to NW determine the popularity rating of the current president. Suppose a poll is to be conducted tomorrow in which 2,000 individuals will be asked whether the president is doing a good or bad job. The 2,000 individuals will be selected by random-digit telephone dialing and asked the question over the phone. a. What is the relevant population? b. What is the variable of interest? Is it quantitative or qualitative? c. What is the sample? d. What is the inference of interest to the pollster? e. What method of data collection is employed? f. How likely is the sample to be representative?

Explanation / Answer

a. The relevant population is all the citizens of the United States.

b. The variable of interest is the opinion of the United States' citizens from their point of view about whether the president is doing a good job or bad job. The opinion of the US citizens is a discrete qualitative variable. We usually count the number of opinions in favor of the president is doing a good job or bad job.

c. The sample data is the 2000 US citizens randomly selected by randomized digits of telephone numbers of the United states' citizens.

d. The inference of interest, the pollster is interested for conducting this study is to estimate the proportion of the US citizens who do not believe that the president is doing a good job among the US entire population.

e. The method of data collection is survey, surveying the US citizens' opinion by asking a question like if the president is doing a good job or bad job, to estimate the proportion in favor or against the President of the United states.

f. Sample is a simple random probabiliy sample. It is not a good representative sample of the all citizens of the United States, the target population. And also the selection method of dialing the 2000 telephone numbers will have many bias such as one person with many telephone numbers, many persons in a family using the same telephone numbers, and no response from the telephone users who are busy, or not interested to participate in the survey. There are quite number of foreign students and workers who are not US citizens but have telephone numbers will also affect the result. Considering that the randomized telephone numbers of 2000 phone users will not be good representative sample of the target population - the all the citizens of the United states.

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