Question

Each of the following surveys has bias. Identify the type of bias. Explain why you think the bias occurred.

(a) A television survey that gives 900 phone numbers for viewers to call with their vote. Each call costs $2.00.

(b) An employer distributes a survey to her 450 employees asking them how many hours each week, on average, they surf the Internet during business hours. Three of the employees complete the survey.

(c) A question on a survey asks, “Do you favor or oppose a minor increase in property tax to ensure fair salaries for teachers and properly equipped school buildings?”

(d) A researcher conducting a poll about national politics sends a survey to a random sample of subscribers to Time magazine

Answer 1

a) It is given that a television survey gave 900 telephone numbers to viewers to call and vote.Also, it is given that each call costs $.2 .

Here, since the cost of the call is $.2, it will prevent the people from voting.So, it becomes a sampling bias.

Thus, the bias present here is sampling bias.

b)

Here we can observe that majority of the employees did not respond.So, here the bias is nonresponse bias.

Thus, the type of bias in this situation is nonresponse bias.

c) Response bias due to wrong wording of question .

d) Here , researcher conducting a poll about national politics sends a survey to a random sample of subscribers to Time magazine

Sampling bias due to undercoverage .