A task force has been established at a small liberal arts college under the direction of the dean of students to examine the quality of students’ experiences on their campus. The task force decided to...

A task force has been established at a small liberal arts college under the direction of the dean of students to examine the quality of students’ experiences on their campus. The task force decided to do a survey to determine students’ knowledge of and their perceptions of the fairness of the judicial system used to enforce the rules in the living units on campus. The questionnaire for the survey included personal questions asking students to describe their own experiences when they had violated college policies or when they had known other students who had violated college policies. A stratified random sample was drawn from the registrar’s list of full-time students living on and off campus. The sample size was 400 on a campus with 2,000 full-time students. Questionnaires were returned by 160 students for a response rate of 40%. One important finding from the survey was that over a third of the respondents rated the judicial system as unfair. The task force met to decide whether to include the survey findings such as this one in its final report to the dean of students.

A Was the initial sample of 400 students likely to be representative of the population of 2,000 fulltime students? Why or why not?

B Identify a potential survey research problem that could be present in this study that would lead the task force to be concerned that the final sample was not representative of the population of 2,000 students.

C Using only the evidence that the response rate for the survey was 40%, the task force concluded that the final sample was not representative of the population of students. They further decided that the ratings of the judicial system as unfair by more than a third of the students was an incorrect overestimate. Do you agree that the finding represents an incorrect estimate? Why or why not?

D While the task force was meeting to discuss their final report, one member of the task force ex pressed the opinion that students’ responses were unlikely to have been truthful and so the results of the survey were useless and should not be reported at all. The director of the task force calls on you to respond to this statement. What would you say?