Due to a misunderstanding of his instructions, a research assistant consistently entered the upper value of an attitude scale as a "6" instead of a "7" when keypunching data for his boss. This is an example of:
A) systematic error.
B) arbitrary error.
C) random error.
D) scaling error.
E) marginal error.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

This is an example of systematic error because the research assistant consistently entered the upper value of the attitude scale incorrectly, which introduced a consistent bias into the data.

Due to a Misunderstanding of His Instructions, a Research Assistant