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

Question 1

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.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

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

Answer 2

True

Question 3

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.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

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 5

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 6

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

Question 7

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

Question 8

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 9

A histogram is an example of a numerical measure.

Question 10

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

Question 11

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 12

Another term for the arithmetic average is the mean.

Question 13

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

Question 14

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

Question 15

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

Question 16

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 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

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 19

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 20

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

Question 21

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

Question 22

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

Question 23

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

Question 24

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 25

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

Question 26

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

Question 27

A company that is interested in determining which of three prices to charge for its products has test marketed the product in three cities,each time using a different price for the product.The number of products sold in the first week is recorded.In this case,the data are considered to have been collected using an experiment.

Question 28

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

Question 29

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 30

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

Question 31

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

Question 32

Mail questionnaires typically generate poor response rates.

Question 33

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

Question 34

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 35

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 36

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

Question 37

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 38

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

Question 39

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 40

In an unstructured interview the questions are scripted.

Question 41

A parameter is the boundary on the population of interest.

Question 42

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

Question 43

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

Question 44

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 45

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 46

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

Question 47

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 48

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

Question 49

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

Question 50

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

Question 51

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

Question 52

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 53

When a group of university students takes a poll of their fellow students on whether they support a proposed fee increase,the sampling method they would use when students walking near the library are surveyed would be called a random sample.

Question 54

Statistics are measures computed from the entire population of data.

Question 55

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 56

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

Question 57

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 58

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 59

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

Question 60

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

Question 61

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

Question 62

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 63

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 64

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

Question 65

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

Question 66

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 67

The sales data for a company measured weekly for the past year would be considered cross-sectional data since the sales values are computed from the entire company.

Question 68

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

Question 69

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

Question 70

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 71

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 72

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

Question 73

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 74

Nominal data is the highest level of data.

Question 75

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 76

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

Question 77

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

Question 78

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

Question 79

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 80

Stratified random sampling is the same thing as simple random sampling.