The data set that you will be using is a study of the forced expiratory volume (

Question

The data set that you will be using is a study of the forced expiratory volume (FEV) of 654 youths, aged 3 to 19, in East Boston. The data was gathered by researchers in the mid to late 1970’s and measures five variables for each participant:

a) Would this be considered an observational or experimental research project? Explain your choice. (2 points)

b) Could you expect the conclusions you reach in analyzing this data to apply to all youth, aged 3-19, in the United States? Explain why or why not. (2 points)

d) What kind of sampling technique appears to be used? (Random, Stratified, Convenience, Cluster, or Systematic) (2 points)

e) What problems can you identify with the sampling technique used? Explain using at least 2 sentences. (2 points)

Explanation / Answer

Part a

This would be considered an observational research project, because researchers do not carry out any experiment for this study and they only use the observations for this research study.

Part b

We could not expect the conclusions we reach in analyzing this data to apply to all youth, aged 3 – 19, in the United States, because data is collected from single place East Boston and we cannot generalize the results of this single place to all youths of United States.

Part d

The convenience sampling technique appears to be used because data is collected from only one city and all youths from this city of given age range is considered as population. Other sampling techniques may be possible based on size of population data, homogeneity of population data, nature and variability of data, etc. (But, nature of data is not explained in the given information.)

Part e

As discussed in the above part, there would be problem of heterogeneous data nature in the sampling technique used. It would be better to use stratified or cluster sampling if data has no homogeneous nature. In the convenience sampling, all youths does not have same probability of being selected. So, this sample could not be proper representative for entire population under consideration.

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