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Social life A question posted on the gamefaqs.com website on August \(1,2011,\) asked visitors to the site, "Do you have an active social life outside the Internet?" \(22 \%\) of the 55,581 respondents said "No" or "Not really, most of my personal contact is online." a) Can this survey be used to estimate the proportion of U.S. adults who would say they have an active social life outside the Internet? Why or why not? b) Can this survey be used to estimate the proportion of visitors to their site who would say they have an active social life outside the Internet? Why or why not?

Short Answer

Expert verified
a) No, it cannot represent U.S. adults. b) Yes, it can represent gamefaqs.com visitors, with bias considerations.

Step by step solution

01

Identify the Survey Population

This survey was conducted on visitors of the gamefaqs.com website. Thus, the population surveyed consists exclusively of visitors to this specific site, not a randomly selected group of U.S. adults.
02

Analyze the Representativeness for U.S. Adults

Since the survey only includes responses from gamefaqs.com visitors, it is not representative of the entire U.S. adult population. The visitors to this website likely have specific interests and demographics that do not match the general population of U.S. adults, hence the survey cannot be generalized to all U.S. adults.
03

Evaluate Representativeness for Site Visitors

The survey results are from a self-selected group of 55,581 site visitors and thus can be used to estimate the proportion of visitors to gamefaqs.com who feel they have an active social life outside the internet. However, it remains constrained by the biases associated with self-selection participation.
04

Consider Self-selection and Voluntary Response Bias

Even among the site visitors, those who chose to respond might differ from those who did not. The survey results could be affected by self-selection or voluntary response bias, but they still represent the subset of visitors who participated.

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Key Concepts

These are the key concepts you need to understand to accurately answer the question.

Self-selection bias
Self-selection bias occurs when individuals choose whether or not to participate in a study. This can lead to a sample that is not representative of the overall population. In the case of the gamefaqs.com survey, the respondents were the ones who decided to participate, rather than being randomly selected. This means that their perspectives may not fully reflect those of all gamefaqs.com visitors or the general U.S. population.
This type of bias poses challenges for researchers because it can introduce a skew in the data results. If, for example, people with more active online social lives are more inclined to participate, then the survey results might not accurately represent people with more varied social activity levels.
To mitigate self-selection bias, researchers often need to employ strategies such as random sampling or incentivizing participation to ensure a more comprehensive representation of the target group.
Representative sample
A representative sample is a subset of a population that accurately reflects the members of the entire population. Achieving a representative sample ensures that the survey results can be generalized to a larger group.
In the exercise, the survey from gamefaqs.com does not serve as a representative sample of U.S. adults because it exclusively features responses from individuals who visit that specific website. These respondents likely share specific characteristics or interests, such as being more engaged with gaming and online communities, which might not be common in the general adult population.
For a sample to be representative, it should be randomly selected, covering various demographics, interests, and lifestyles that adequately represent the target population. When a survey does not achieve a representative sample, its findings are limited to the surveyed group and cannot be reliably extended beyond that group.
Voluntary response bias
Voluntary response bias happens when participants in a survey or study have elected to partake of their own accord, often leading to a non-random, unbalanced sample that can skew the findings.
In the gamefaqs.com survey, the results were based on voluntary responses, meaning people responded if they felt inclined or had a particular interest in the topic. This can skew the results toward those who have stronger opinions or experiences about their social lives online or offline, while those who are indifferent or uninterested may choose not to participate.
Consequently, voluntary response bias can distort survey outcomes, making it challenging to determine whether the findings accurately reflect the opinions or behaviors of the entire population in question. To reduce this bias, researchers may implement mandatory participation or provide incentives for participation to ensure a broader and more balanced range of responses.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

\- Sampling methods Consider each of these situations. Do you think the proposed sampling method is appropriate? Explain. a) We want to know what percentage of local doctors accept Medicaid patients. We call the offices of 50 doctors randomly selected from local Yellow Page listings. b) We want to know what percentage of local businesses anticipate hiring additional employees in the upcoming month. We randomly select a page in the Yellow Pages and call every business listed there.

Phone surveys Anytime we conduct a survey, we must take care to avoid undercoverage. Suppose we plan to select 500 names from the city phone book, call their homes between noon and \(4 \mathrm{PM}\), and interview whoever answers, anticipating contacts with at least 200 people. a) Why is it difficult to use a simple random sample here? b) Describe a more convenient, but still random, sampling strategy. c) What kinds of households are likely to be included in the eventual sample of opinion? Excluded? d) Suppose, instead, that we continue calling each number, perhaps in the morning or evening, until an adult is contacted and interviewed. How does this improve the sampling design? e) Random-digit dialing machines can generate the phone calls for us. How would this improve our design? Is anyone still excluded?

Toxic waste The Environmental Protection Agency took a map of a region near a former industrial waste dump and placed a grid of 552 squares on it. They randomly selected any 16 of those squares from which to collect soil samples and checked each for evidence of toxic chemicals. a) What type of sampling did they use? b) Is there any sort of bias associated with this sampling procedure? c) One researcher suggests that plots closer to the old dump site could contain more contaminants than those farther away. How could the sampling procedure be improved to take this into account

Emoticons The website www.gamefaqs.com asked, as their question of the day to which visitors to the site were invited to respond, "Do you ever use emoticons when you type online?" Of the 87,262 respondents, \(27 \%\) said that they did not use emoticons.;- a) What kind of sample was this? b) How much confidence would you place in using \(27 \%\) as an estimate of the fraction of people who use emoticons?

\- Another mistaken poll Prior to the mayoral election discussed in Exercise \(15,\) the newspaper also conducted a poll. The paper surveyed a random sample of registered voters stratified by political party, age, sex, and area of residence. This poll predicted that Amabo would win the election with \(52 \%\) of the vote. The newspaper was wrong: Amabo lost, getting only \(46 \%\) of the vote. Do you think the newspaper's faulty prediction is more likely to be a result of bias or sampling error? Explain.

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