Wording the survey Two members of the PTA committee in Exercises 26 and 27 have proposed different questions to ask in seeking parents’ opinions. Question 1: Should elementary school–age children have to pass high-stakes tests in order to remain with their classmates? Question 2: Should schools and students be held accountable for meeting yearly learning goals by testing students before they advance to the next grade?
a) Do you think responses to these two questions might differ? How? What kind of bias is this?
b) Propose a question with more neutral wording that might better assess parental opinion.
Exercises 26 and 27
Parent opinion, part 1 In a large city school system with 20 elementary schools, the school board is considering the adoption of a new policy that would require elementary students to pass a test in order to be promoted to the next grade. The PTA wants to find out whether parents agree with this plan. Listed below are some of the ideas proposed for gathering data. For each, indicate what kind of sampling strategy is involved and what (if any) biases might result.
a) Put a big ad in the newspaper asking people to log their opinions on the PTA website.
b) Randomly select one of the elementary schools and contact every parent by phone.
c) Send a survey home with every student, and ask parents to fill it out and return it the next day.
d) Randomly select 20 parents from each elementary school. Send them a survey, and follow up with a phone call if they do not return the survey within a week.
Exercise 27
Parent opinion, part 2 Let’s revisit the school system described in Exercise 26. Four new sampling strategies have been proposed to help the PTA determine whether parents favor requiring elementary students to pass a test in order to be promoted to the next grade. For each, indicate what kind of sampling strategy is involved and what (if any) biases might result.
a) Run a poll on the local TV news, asking people to text in whether they favor or oppose the plan.
b) Hold a PTA meeting at each of the 20 elementary schools, and tally the opinions expressed by those who attend the meetings.
c) Randomly select one class at each elementary school and contact each of those parents.
d) Go through the district’s enrollment records, selecting every 40th parent. PTA volunteers will go to those homes to interview the people chosen.