Deck 1: The Where, Why, and How of Data Collection

Question 1

Descriptive statistical tools include graphs, charts, and numerical measures.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

In this course, the term business statistics refers to the set of tools and techniques that are used to convert information into meaningful data.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Statistics is a discipline that involves tools and techniques used to describe data and draw conclusions.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

A light bulb manufacturer wants to advertise the average life of its light bulbs so it tests a subset of light bulbs. This is an example of inferential statistics.

Question 5

Statistical inference would be used as the primary statistical tool by a quality control manager who wishes to estimate the average weight of her company's products.

Question 6

A sales manager has five salespeople. The following are the number of units sold by the five salespeople during the past week: {5, 13, 6, 2, 4}. Based on the data, the mean number of units sold was 6 units.

Question 7

An accountant has recently prepared a report for a client that contains a variety of graphs and charts. In doing so, she has used descriptive statistical methods.

Question 8

Some of the most common methods of collecting data include experiments, telephone surveys, mail questionnaires, direct observations, and personal interviews.

Question 9

An accountant who recently examined 200 accounts from a company's total of 4,000 accounts in an effort to estimate the percentage of all accounts that have incorrect journal entries is using descriptive statistical analysis to reach the conclusion.

Question 10

A histogram is an example of a numerical measure.

Question 11

Another term for the arithmetic average is the mean.

Question 12

Typically, it is possible to include a larger number of questions in a phone survey than in a mail survey since it takes less time to complete the survey over the phone.

Question 13

An experiment is a process that generates data as its outcome.

Question 14

Descriptive statistics allow a decision maker to reach a conclusion about a population based on a subset from the population.

Question 15

A manufacturing manager has developed a table that shows the average production volume each day for the past three weeks. The average production level is an example of a numerical measure.

Question 16

Companies frequently use charts and graphs in their regular communications with stockholders and investors; this shows the use of descriptive statistics.

Question 17

Hypothesis testing and estimation are two statistical tools that are used to draw inferences about a large data set based on a subset of the data.

Question 18

The editor of a local newspaper is interested in determining the percentage of subscribers who read the paper's editorials. The statistical technique that he would use is called estimation.

Question 19

Experimental design is a plan for performing an experiment where the effects of one or more factors on the variable of interest are measured.

Question 20

An Internet-based or emailed survey is not an alternative method of data collection.

Question 21

Open-end questions are typically included in a survey when the objective is to provide the maximum opportunity for the respondent to express his or her opinion.

Question 22

A short survey with closed-end questions is likely to have a better response rate than a long survey with open-ended questions.

Question 23

Close-end questions provide the greatest opportunity to obtain ideas and thoughts on the part of those surveyed but the resulting data are more difficult to analyze.

Question 24

On a survey, the questions pertaining to the background of the respondent (age, gender, etc.) are referred to as demographic questions.

Question 25

Data gathered from a structured interview is generally easier to analyze than data collected from an unstructured interview.

Question 26

One of the advantages of data check sheets is that as the data are being recorded, they are also being displayed in a useful format.

Question 27

In an unstructured interview the questions are scripted.

Question 28

The method of data collection called direct observation is always associated with gathering data from people.

Question 29

Mail questionnaires typically generate poor response rates.

Question 30

Assuming that you are planning to collect data using an experiment, it will be very important to establish an appropriate survey design.

Question 31

The primary purpose of performing a pre-test when developing a telephone or mail survey is to make sure that the respondents can understand the questions and are able to provide meaningful responses.

Question 32

One way to improve the response rate for a survey is to administer the surveys directly to the respondents.

Question 33

The Cranston Company recently met with a group of its customers to ask questions about the service and products provided by the company. The data collected in this process would be an example of data collected through direct observation.

Question 34

When comparing experiments, surveys, and direct observation as methods of data collection, the method that would typically be the least expensive is surveys.

Question 35

An open-end question requires respondents to choose from a short list of choices

Question 36

Questions on a written survey dealing with the characteristics of the respondent (age, income, etc.) are referred to as categorical questions.

Question 37

Data collected using open-end questions is generally easier to analyze than data collected from closed-end questions.

Question 38

The Georgia Company, a pharmaceutical company, recently conducted a study in which 20 people were given a new drug and 20 other people were given a placebo. The objective was to determine whether there was a difference in pain relief between those using the new drug versus those using the placebo. The data collection used here is an example of an experiment.

Question 39

When an interviewer asks a specified series of questions in the course of a personal interview, he/she is conducting an unstructured interview.

Question 40

The marketing division of a company is interested in determining whether increased advertising will increase sales in three of its target cities. Three levels of advertising are used and the sales are recorded for the month immediately following the ads. In this case, the data are considered to have been collected using an experiment.

Question 41

The First National Bank mailed out a survey to all 3,456 savings account customers. A total of 568 surveys were returned. Values computed from the returned surveys would constitute parameters since all 568 customers were surveyed.

Question 42

When a company scans the bar codes on its products in an effort to count the number of products that remain in inventory, the company is collecting data through experimentation.

Question 43

Data collected on the Internet can generally be considered accurate since the data must go through a screening process before they can be placed on the Internet.

Question 44

A pharmaceutical company conducts a study where 50 patients are given a drug. They find that 10 percent of patients experience nausea as a side effect. This 10 percent is an example of a parameter.

Question 45

When the production manager selects a sample of items that have been produced on her production line and computes the proportion of those items that are defective, the proportion is referred to as a statistic.

Question 46

When a survey is done you can always assume that non-respondents would have answered the same way as those who did respond.

Question 47

When the marketing manager for a large company surveys a portion of the total customers of his company, he is using a sample from the population.

Question 48

When people fail to respond to a survey, the data collection process may suffer from nonresponse bias.

Question 49

It is possible for an interviewer to interject bias into the data collection project by the way he or she asks the questions.

Question 50

A sample is selected from a population in cases where selecting data from the entire population is either very difficult or very expensive.

Question 51

When university newspaper reporters take a poll of students by standing outside of the nearest pub to survey students about the university offering upgraded food options, the sampling method used is called a random sample.

Question 52

A parameter is the boundary on the population of interest.

Question 53

If an analyst computes statistics from a sample, the sample is by definition a statistical sample.

Question 54

Recently, an analyst in a company's marketing department surveyed customers regarding how often they buy a particular product. One customer indicated that she purchased the product 17 times in the last six months, but the analyst recorded the response as 71 times. This is an example of observer bias.

Question 55

Selection bias occurs when the respondent decides which of the questions on the survey to answer.

Question 56

Population parameters are descriptive numerical measures, such as an average, that describe the entire population.

Question 57

Statistics are measures computed from the entire population of data.

Question 58

It is possible for a nonstatistical sample to yield statistics that have values closer to the corresponding parameter than will a statistical sample.

Question 59

A census is an enumeration of the entire sample of items selected from the population of interest.

Question 60

When the United States conducts a census that counts all people in the country, this is an example of using a sample.

Question 61

In election years, the polls that are conducted by such companies as Gallup and Harris typically employ stratified random sampling to reduce the number of people that will need to be surveyed.

Question 62

Sales data measured each week for the past twenty weeks are examples of time-series data.

Question 63

One of the most common statistical sampling techniques is convenience sampling.

Question 64

A common underpinning of all statistical sampling techniques is the concept of random selection.

Question 65

A market research firm that surveys customers in a shopping mall by asking various people to respond to a short survey about a new product is performing convenience sampling.

Question 66

Nominal data is the highest level of data.

Question 67

If a state agency wishes to conduct on-site surveys of small businesses throughout the state, cluster sampling could potentially be used to reduce the geographical area over which the surveys would need to be conducted.

Question 68

The sales data for a company measured in the week following an increased ad campaign would be considered cross-sectional data.

Question 69

If a population is very large, it may be better to select a sample from the population than to try to obtain a census in an effort to reduce measurement error.

Question 70

Cluster sampling is the same thing as stratified random sampling.

Question 71

When a small sample is used, a stratified random sample is more likely to provide the desired information than a simple random sample.

Question 72

When students are asked to list their age and the percentage of their college expenses that they pay for themselves, the type of data being collected is quantitative.

Question 73

When stratified random sampling is employed, the population is divided into homogeneous subgroups called strata.

Question 74

Recording vehicle type as sedan, minivan, pick-up truck, etc. is an example of qualitative data.

Question 75

Possibly the most frequently used nonstatistical sampling procedure is the simple random sample.

Question 76

It is possible for the same survey questionnaire to yield both quantitative and qualitative data.

Question 77

Suppose a professor collects survey data by passing out surveys in his/her classes, where the population of interest is defined as all students enrolled at that university. This is an example of nonstatistical sampling technique.

Question 78

One of the reasons that managers prefer statistical sampling to nonstatistical sampling is that statistical sampling is generally easier to perform and less expensive.

Question 79

When customers return a product to a store and the store asks the customer to indicate the reason that the merchandise was returned, the resulting data are quantitative since multiple people will be providing the data.

Question 80

Simple random sampling involves selecting members of the population in such a way that all members are equally likely to be chosen.