Deck 2: Types of Data, Data Collection and Sampling

Question 1

A variable is any characteristic of a population or sample.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

A customer advocacy group would like to compare customers' satisfaction with four financial institutions. Describe a sampling plan that would be suitable for studying customers' satisfaction and for comparing the banks.

Answer 2

Stratified random samples should be selected in which the strata are the four financial institutions and a simple random sample of customers is drawn at each institution.

Question 3

Which of the following refers to the differences between the sample and the population that exist only because of the observations that happened to be selected for the sample?

A)Response bias
B)Non-response bias
C)Sampling error
D)Non-sampling error

Answer 3

Sampling error

Question 4

A politician wants to estimate the mean age of voters in her electorate. Unfortunately, she does not have a complete list of voters. Describe a sampling plan that would be suitable for her purposes.

Question 5

Which of the following is a characteristic of cluster sampling?

A)The population is not divided.
B)The population is divided into groups of similar characteristics.
C)The population is divided into homogeneous groups.
D)The population is divided into heterogeneous groups

Question 6

Stratified sampling is preferred over cluster sampling when it is difficult or costly to develop a complete list of the population members.

Question 7

Which of the following is an example of non-sampling errors?

A)Errors that arise from the recording of incorrect responses.
B)Errors that arise when responses are not obtained from some members of the sample.
C)Errors that arise when some members of the target population cannot possibly be selected in the sample.
D)All of these choices are correct.

Question 8

When the population is divided into mutually exclusive sets, and then a simple random sample is drawn from each set, this is called:

A)simple random sampling.
B)stratified random sampling.
C)cluster sampling.
D)selection bias.

Question 9

Sampling error may be reduced by increasing the sample size but non-sampling error cannot be reduced by increasing the sample size.

Question 10

Describe the key differences between numerical data and nominal data.

Question 11

List four of the most popular sources of statistical data.

Question 12

Which of the following must be avoided in designing a questionnaire?

A)Dichotomous questions.
B)Leading questions.
C)Open-ended questions.
D)Demographic questions.

Question 13

The target population is the population about which we want to draw inferences, whereas the sampled population is the actual population from which the sample has been drawn.

Question 14

A professor intends to compare the performances of his first year economics subject students at the four campuses of the university. In order to do so, he selects a random sample of 40 first year economics students from each campus. What is this type of sampling called?

A)Stratified random sampling.
B)Simple random sampling.
C)Cluster sampling.
D)None of these choices are correct.

Question 15

Which of the following is not an example of primary data?

A)Data published by the United States Bureau of Census.
B)Data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
C)Data published by the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).
D)Data published by the United Nations Statistical Division.

Question 16

Which of the following sampling plans uses random methods of selection?

A)Simple random sampling.
B)Simple random sampling, stratified random sampling and cluster sampling.
C)Simple random sampling and stratified random sampling.
D)Cluster sampling.

Question 17

When every possible sample of size n has the same chance of being selected, this is called:

A)simple random sampling.
B)stratified random sampling.
C)cluster sampling.
D)sampling error.

Question 18

Briefly describe three types of non-sampling errors.