Can you proofread my statistics project? Thanks!
Introduction
We surveyed downtown (near the pier). The population that was surveyed is the Huntington Beach residents. The two issues that we addressed were "Do the characteristics of the interviewer affect responses?" and "Does anonymity change the responses to sensitive questions?" The question that we asked was "Do you think teenagers today read enough of the classic novels?" We then respectively addressed these two issues by having Stephanie's mom ask the question, and then we asked the question while holding a classic novel. Using randInt with the graphing calculator, we determined that we would survey every 3rd person. We surveyed a large sample size of 60 people for each of three methods of questioning.
Conclusions
The characteristics of the interviewer affected responses. Having Stephanie's mom, a person from the older generation, ask the question influenced more people to answer "no." However, anonymity did not change the responses to sensitive questions. We expected that by asking the question while holding a classic novel more people would be influenced to say yes, but the results reveal the opposite. This approach we used of anonymity was not effective. The interviewee perhaps saw the classic novel as a supplement with the survey. From this project, we learned that bias in surveys do cause changes in responses. In addition, certain bias such as the anonymity is not effective in certain survey question as the one we chose.
Summary
The focus of this project is to address two forms of bias in surveys. We chose to ask "Do you think teenagers today read enough of the classic novels?" The first form of bias is altering the characteristics or appearance of the interviewer. Stephanie's mom, who is older and replaced us teenagers, swayed more people to answer no and agree with her. The second form of bias is anonymity. We each held a classic novel while asking the question to implicitly show that teenagers do read enough classic books. To compare these two forms of bias, we first plainly asked the question and then asked the question with the two forms of bias. To ensure that we are more accurately representing the large population of Huntington Beach residents, we sampled a large sample size of 60 for each of the three methods of questioning. A large sample size is considered to be 40 or more. We chose a larger sample size of 60 instead of 40 to decrease the margin of error or in other words, increase how accurate we believe our guess is based on the variability of the estimate. We also ensured that the sample is random and that we are representing a variety of people in the population by the use of randInt in the calculator. In our case, the calculator came out with the number 3, so we surveyed every 3rd person. After the surveying, we saw that Stephanie's mom asking the question did in fact sway more people to say no. Therefore, the result confirms that the characteristics or appearance of the interviewer affect responses. However, holding a classic novel while asking the question gave the opposite result of more no's. In this case, the result does not confirm that anonymity changed the responses to sensitive questions.
Introduction
We surveyed downtown (near the pier). The population that was surveyed is the Huntington Beach residents. The two issues that we addressed were "Do the characteristics of the interviewer affect responses?" and "Does anonymity change the responses to sensitive questions?" The question that we asked was "Do you think teenagers today read enough of the classic novels?" We then respectively addressed these two issues by having Stephanie's mom ask the question, and then we asked the question while holding a classic novel. Using randInt with the graphing calculator, we determined that we would survey every 3rd person. We surveyed a large sample size of 60 people for each of three methods of questioning.
Conclusions
The characteristics of the interviewer affected responses. Having Stephanie's mom, a person from the older generation, ask the question influenced more people to answer "no." However, anonymity did not change the responses to sensitive questions. We expected that by asking the question while holding a classic novel more people would be influenced to say yes, but the results reveal the opposite. This approach we used of anonymity was not effective. The interviewee perhaps saw the classic novel as a supplement with the survey. From this project, we learned that bias in surveys do cause changes in responses. In addition, certain bias such as the anonymity is not effective in certain survey question as the one we chose.
Summary
The focus of this project is to address two forms of bias in surveys. We chose to ask "Do you think teenagers today read enough of the classic novels?" The first form of bias is altering the characteristics or appearance of the interviewer. Stephanie's mom, who is older and replaced us teenagers, swayed more people to answer no and agree with her. The second form of bias is anonymity. We each held a classic novel while asking the question to implicitly show that teenagers do read enough classic books. To compare these two forms of bias, we first plainly asked the question and then asked the question with the two forms of bias. To ensure that we are more accurately representing the large population of Huntington Beach residents, we sampled a large sample size of 60 for each of the three methods of questioning. A large sample size is considered to be 40 or more. We chose a larger sample size of 60 instead of 40 to decrease the margin of error or in other words, increase how accurate we believe our guess is based on the variability of the estimate. We also ensured that the sample is random and that we are representing a variety of people in the population by the use of randInt in the calculator. In our case, the calculator came out with the number 3, so we surveyed every 3rd person. After the surveying, we saw that Stephanie's mom asking the question did in fact sway more people to say no. Therefore, the result confirms that the characteristics or appearance of the interviewer affect responses. However, holding a classic novel while asking the question gave the opposite result of more no's. In this case, the result does not confirm that anonymity changed the responses to sensitive questions.
