Question

The operations manager at the corporate headquarters of a large wood products company wanted the average time that employees spend at their computers each week The manager randomly sampled employees and obtained a 99% confidence interval of (17 hours/week, 25 hours/week) Which of following would be true if the level of confidence was lowered to 95%?

1. The width of the confidence interval would remain the same.
2. The width of the confidence interval would be smaller.
3. The width of the confidence interval would be larger.
4. More information is needed to determine what would happen to the width of the confidence interval.

Answer 1

2. The width of the confidence interval would be smaller.

Explanation:

The confidence interval is the range of values around sample statistic, which are expected to contain actual population parameter. Confidence level is in percentage from, stating the probability that population parameter is in proposed confidence interval range.

A lower confidence level means that there is less certainty of population parameter being in the range, so the confidence interval range becomes narrower.