A researcher wanted to learn something about the religious affiliation of the st

Question

A researcher wanted to learn something about the religious affiliation of the students at the local college (e.g., what percent were Catholic, Jewish, etc.). This information was not available from the Registrar and the researcher was working with a very limited budget. Therefore, she used the principle of EPSEM to select a group of 200 students, called each of them at home, and conducted a brief interview. She was able to develop many conclusions based on this information. For example, she found that 50 of the 200 respondents were Catholic and concluded that about 25% of students at the college would claim the same religious affiliation. o Identify each of the following elements in this research scenario and explain their importance: Population Sample Parameter Statistic EPSEM Representative

Explanation / Answer

1. Population:

Population is defined as the elements or the observations about which the researches interested in and for which the answer of the questoin is represented.

In the given research, the researcher is interested in religious affiliation of the students at the local college. Hence, the population is all the students at the local college.

2. Sample

Sample is defined as a subset of the population. That is the samples are the elements that are drawn from the population. Samples are drawn becuase, a resercher might not be able to investigate the each and every student in the college individually. Therefore, here the samples are 200 students who were all selected for the investigation.

3. Parameter:

Parameter is defined as any estimate which is derived form the entire population. That is if the proportion of students belongs to Catholic is calculated among all the students in the college, then it is a parameter.

4. Statistic:

Statistic is defined as any estimate which is derived from the sampled observations. In this research, the percentage of students at the college would claim them as Catholic is obtained as 25%. Becuase, out of 200, 50 students were Catholic. So, this proportion of 25% from the sample of 200 students is a statistic.

5. EPSEM

EPSEM stands for equal probability of selection method sampling. Since, we might not be able to invetigate the entire observations in the population, we draw samples or subset of the population for the research. Then, whatever the results that are obtained in the samples will be generalized to the corresponding population. Hence, the samples that are selected for the reasearch should be representative of the population. And these samples should not have any bias towards the results. Therefore, a method called EPSEM is used where each and every individual in the population will have the equal probability of selected in to the research. This can be done by selecting the individual in a random manner.

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