Chapter 3: Surveys and Sampling

Extra Practice Problems

Business Statistics: A First Course
BMGT230/BMGT230B
1. A business magazine mailed a questionnaire to the human resources directors of all Fortune 500 companies,
and received responses from 23% of them. Those respondents reported that they did not find that such
surveys intruded significantly on their workday.
a. What is the population?
b. What is the population parameter of interest?
c. What is the sampling frame?
d. What is the sample?
e. What is the sampling method, including whether or not randomization was employed
f. Are there any potential sources of bias you can detect and any problems you see in generalizing to the
population of interest?
2. A company packing snack foods maintains quality control by randomly selecting 10 cases from each days
production and weighing the bags. Then they open one bag from each case and inspect the contents.
a. What is the population?
b. What is the population parameter of interest?
c. What is the sampling frame?
d. What is the sample?
e. What is the sampling method, including whether or not randomization was employed
f. Are there any potential sources of bias you can detect and any problems you see in generalizing to the
population of interest?
3. A research group is interested in gauging perceptions about food safety among professionals in the food
industry. Specifically, they wish to determine the percentage of professional food preparers in the United
States that believe food safety has improved. They listed the members of the national chef organization in
alphabetical order and took every tenth member until they succeeded in contacting 100 members. What kind
of sampling method have they used?
a. Cluster sampling
b. Stratified random sampling
c. Multistage sampling
d. Systematic sampling
e. Simple random sampling
4. A website asked, as their question of the day to which visitors to the site were invited to respond, Do you
ever read the end-user license agreements when installing software or games? Of the 53,441 respondents,
61.66% said they never read those agreementsa fact that software manufacturers might find important.
a. What kind of sample was this?
b. Which kinds of biases (if any) are introduced based off the sampling method?
5. The director in charge of overseeing all of the elementary schools in the local school district is interested in
better understanding the elementary students performance in class. There are 11 different elementary
schools in the local district, and the director decides to randomly select 15 students from each of the 11
elementary schools.
a. What is the population of interest?
b. What is the sampling method?
c. Are any types of biases introduced in this sampling method? If so, which ones?

Chapter 3: Surveys and Sampling

Extra Practice Problems
Business Statistics: A First Course
BMGT230/BMGT230B
6. As a huge sports fan going to Penn State University, you want to learn more about the intercollegiate
athletes at PSU. You know there are 26 PSU intercollegiate teams, and you decide to randomly select 8
teams from the 26 possible teams and you survey every athlete on those 8 selected teams.
a. What is the population of interest?
b. What is the sampling method?
c. Are any types of biases introduced in this sampling method? If so, which ones?
7. We need to survey a random sample of the 300 passengers on a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo. Names
each sampling method described below.
a. Pick every tenth passenger as people board the plane.
b. From the boarding list, randomly choose five people flying first class and 25 of the other passengers.
c. Randomly generate 30 seat numbers and survey the passengers who sit there.
d. Randomly select a seat position (right window, right center, right aisle, etc.) and survey all the
passengers sitting in those seats.