Final answer:
The correct answer is option a. To set the first element of the list named 'salary_steps' to 30000, the correct Python statement is 'salary_steps[0] = 30000'. This would directly assign the value to the first element of the list.
Step-by-step explanation:
To assign the value 30000 to the first element of a non-empty list salary_steps, you would use the index of the first element, which is 0. In Python, indexing starts at 0, meaning the first element is accessed using 0 as the index. Therefore, to set the first element of the list salary_steps to 30000, you would write the following statement:
salary_steps[0] = 30000
The correct answer to this question is A) Salary_steps[0] = 30000. The other options provided would either add a new element to the list or modify a different element (not the first one).