Question

2. A student researcher tries to determine the proportion of vegetarians at Montgomery College. She stands outside the MC cafeteria and asks the first 10 people who walk by whether they are vegetarians or not. She found 10/10 people said they were not vegetarians, so she concluded that there are no vegetarians at Montgomery College. Briefly describe at least two things that made this a poor study (use proper statistical bias terminology discussed in class).

Answer 1

The Observational study had only 10 samples leading to sampling errors.

There is a measurement error in the way the data being collected.

There is selection bias in this study. The survey has to have the randomness element in it. But in this case, the frist 10 participants are being surveyed by missing the random component.

The population size is too small to conclude on a particular hypothesis.

There is availability bias too in this case. As Whatever came to the mind first, we decided upon that parameter of evaluation. Surveying only the readily available number of people irrespective of taking other population into consideration.