Question

An online article about an opinion poll says that "41% of Americans own a gun." The poll is based on online survey interviews with 2,700 adults randomly chosen from a numbered list of 750,000 responses from around the United States, excluding New England states.

Part A: What is the population and sample in this poll?

Part B: What type of sampling is used?

Part C: Are there any sources of bias present? Explain.

Answer 1

The answer before is right but you will get more points if you say that there is undercoverage bias for part C.

Explanation:

Answer 2

See below

Explanation:

A) The population of the poll is the United States Population EXCLUDING New England States. In other words, the population is all USA population except the New England population. Remember that population is all the set of individuals from where you extract your sample. The sample are those 2,700 adults interviewed.

B) The sampling used is, as said in the statement, a randome sampling.

C) Yes! There could be a bias because of the exclusion of New England States if the people who lives there tends to have more guns than the average american population. This could be, for example, due to that those states have the least gun owning in America or, contrary, if they have the highest. If Rode Island is the most violent state and has the highest gun owning rate, the results could be biased. However, we can't confirm it without seeing the data, but there is possible.