Exam 1: The Where, why, and How of Data Collection

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

A company is interested in determining which of several advertising layouts is most effective at generating additional sales.The data collection tool that would most likely be used in this situation is:

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

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

In order to determine a parameter (such as a mean)of a population you would need to conduct a

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

If you have an ordinal variable,it is possible to precisely measure the magnitude of the difference between the possible values of the variable.

The human resources department at a major high tech company recently conducted an employee satisfaction survey of 100 of its 3,000 employees.Data were collected on such variables as age,gender,marital status,current salary,level of overall satisfaction on a scale from 1 to 5,number of years with the company,and job title.Considering the age variable where employees were asked to list their age at their last birthday,which of the following best describes the level of data measurement for that variable?

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.

If a stratified random sample is to be conducted,which of the following is true?

Discuss the two major types of descriptive statistics.

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.

The Biltmore Hotel manager is getting ready to make a presentation that she hopes will justify adding additional staff.As part of the presentation,she has constructed charts and graphs.The general type of statistical analysis she is using is:

When the park ranger at Yellowstone National Park reports the average length of time that visitors spend in the park,he is using:

For which data collection method is it most important to have a polished-looking survey form?

Recently,a major tire manufacturer stated in its advertising that its tires with a new tire tread design will last more than 50,000 miles on average.A consumer agency collected a subset of these tires and tested them in very controlled conditions.Based on this test,the agency concluded that the manufacturer was justified in making this claim.The process described is an example of:

Another term for the arithmetic average is the mean.

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.

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

As a member of the student council at your university,you have been assigned the task of conducting a phone survey of undergraduate students to determine satisfaction with the campus food service.Explain how you would go about selecting a simple random sample.