. An MPH student is doing research on smoking at CSUN. She needs to create a sam
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Question
. An MPH student is doing research on smoking at CSUN. She needs to create a sample that will hopefully represent all 35,000 students. She has unfortunately waited until the last minutes to collect data and so has only one day to get responses to her survey. She decided to stand in front of the library between 2 and 3 pm and randomly asks students to complete her survey. She then proceeds to the Food place in campus and collects more surveys between 4 and 5 pm. Please give 3 reasons why this sample does/doesn't not accurately represent the student body.
Explanation / Answer
This sample is convenient and suiting to the needs as at the last minute survey was done and easy to do this way.
But the question about whether this sample represents the student body is having some concern. Between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. only the students who have free hours that time might visit library and this may not be a true representation of the total students. Same case for food place.
Hence 3 reasons why this sample does not accurate represent student body:
i) The selected students are only the list who have free hours during this time and may not represent the whole student population
ii) Only students interested in library books would visit library while some students may prefer to refer from the internet or other sources. Similarly people who do not bring lunch from home or who prefer to go to canteen only would visit and hence some groups of students are completely left in this sample
iii) Compared to the total strength of college no of students visiting libraries or food places may not be in the desired proportion to ensure hypothesis testing. Hence these 3 are the main reasons.
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