Identify the sampling method and any bias. The county road department wants to know which roads cause the most concern among the residents of the county. They ask the local restaurants to hand out survey forms for customers to return by mail.

Question

jim_thompson5910 · Answer

How far did you get with this?

anonymous · Answer

I think maybe self-selected? Because the respondents choose if they want to complete the survey or not.

anonymous · Answer

@jim_thompson5910

jim_thompson5910 · Answer

have a look at this list https://www.statpac.com/surveys/sampling.htm

anonymous · Answer

Maybe convenience?

anonymous · Answer

Yeah, I think it's probably convenience.

jim_thompson5910 · Answer

yes, it's a convenience sample

jim_thompson5910 · Answer

so what are the biases here?

anonymous · Answer

Depending on whether they gave the survey to groups (who dine together) or individuals within the groups, people could influence others they know into giving similar feedback, or discussing their answers?

anonymous · Answer

*with each other.

jim_thompson5910 · Answer

well first off, you're asking restaurants to hand these out (possibly for free) to customers

this is something that might cost the restaurants and yet they aren't earning money for this

jim_thompson5910 · Answer

so perhaps some restaurants won't be active in handing them out (some may not even bother at all)

jim_thompson5910 · Answer

also, if you focus on just the restaurant customers, you are leaving out everyone else who uses the roads

jim_thompson5910 · Answer

and not all of the customers answer. The ones that do usually have a strong opinion one way or another, so you may get the extreme ends of the debate. This is known as voluntary response bias http://stattrek.com/statistics/dictionary.aspx?definition=voluntary_response_bias

anonymous · Answer

@jim_thompson5910  Sorry, my computer shut off! But thank you so much for all of your help.

jim_thompson5910 · Answer

you're welcome