To Plan the Course Offerings for the Next Year a University

Multiple Choice

To plan the course offerings for the next year a university department dean needs to estimate what impact the "No Child Left Behind" legislation might have on the teacher credentialing program. Historically, 40% of this university's pre-service teachers have qualified for paid internship positions each year. The Dean of Education looks at a random sample of internship applications to see what proportion indicate the applicant has achieved the content-mastery that is required for the internship. Based on these data he creates a 90% confidence interval of (33%, 41%) . Could this confidence interval be used to test the hypothesis H₀: p = 0.40 versus HA: p < 0.40 at the a = 0.05 level of significance?

A) Yes, since 40% is not the center of the confidence interval he rejects the null hypothesis, concluding that the percentage of qualified applicants will decrease.
B) No, because the dean should have used a 95% confidence interval.
C) No, because the dean only reviewed a sample of the applicants instead of all of them.
D) Yes, since 40% is in the confidence interval he accepts the null hypothesis, concluding that the percentage of applicants qualified for paid internship positions will stay the same.
E) Yes, since 40% is in the confidence interval he fails to reject the null hypothesis, concluding that there is not strong enough evidence of any change in the percent of qualified applicants.