Question

A restaurant chain's owners are trying to decide if they want to open up a franchise in your town. To help them decide, they conduct a telephone survey of people in your town. One of the survey questions is "Do you prefer Thai food or Chinese food?" Is the question biased? Explain.

Answer 1

These types of marketing/statistics questions are very subjective and interpretive and I have seen different authorsgive different answers! Most of them would probably say that the question is biased, but believe it or not, some would say no, because you are ordering of listing one before the other. A more objective question is just to ask what someone's favorite Oriental food is and not list Thai before Chinese. It's hard to guess what your author believes, but I would think he/she would say that the question is biased.

Answer 2

There is a point in the psychology of asking questions that , given a choice, if most people were otherwise undecided, they will pick the second in the list, because it is last and sticks in the memory better.

Answer 3

ok so how should i explain?

Answer 4

So, overall, it is persuasive to get people to choose the second choice by listing it second. How to explain? I would say that it is biased, though slightly, because you are listing it second. The unbiased question is just to ask "What is your favorite Oriental food ethnicity?". I have to tell you, that I am only about 75% sure of my answer to you, so I would definitely here invite other people's response on this. Don't just go with my answer here.

Answer 5

So, keep this open for a while. Some people might disagree with me here and say that the question is unbiased because you are approaching people randomly and they are not seeking you out. Those aspects DO make the question somewhat unbiased. See? It's complicated!

Answer 6

One other thing I forgot.

Answer 7

I DO remember that the answer to a similar question I had long ago says that this is biased because you are contacting only people with telephones! So they said it was biased (THAT author did). I thought it was a stupid reason to call it biased though.

Answer 8

Thanks @tcarroll010

Answer 9

and yes this question is stupid

Answer 10

The questions in statistics that ask for biased/not biased I found to be the hardest.

Answer 11

This is the best that I could do here. Keep in mind the telephone! Though most people have them nowadays!

Answer 12

yep thank you

Answer 13

uw!