Question

Pete is conducting a survey to determine his customers’ overall satisfaction about the quality of his company’s products. He sends out surveys to the 5 customers who have purchased the largest number of items over the past year. Are his results likely to be representative of the population he is trying to analyze? Explain

Answer 1

Given that Pete is conducting a survey to determine his customers’ overall satisfaction about the quality of his company’s products. He sends out surveys to the 5 customers who have purchased the largest number of items over the past year.

His results are not likely to be representative of the population he is trying to analyze because
1.) 5 customers may be too small of a sample to represent the population of customers that bought products from him in the past year.

2.) His result is biased because his sample represent only the customers that
have purchased the largest number of items over the past year and those that purchased smaller number of products are not covered by his survey.

Answer 2

His method does not show the answer he is trying to find. This is because Pete is only conducting a survey to 5 customers who have purchased the largest number of items over the past year. If he wishes to find the real answer, he should give out his survey form to more than 5 people for it to be factual.