Question

b) During the campaign leading up the abovementioned referendum vote, a polling company conducted a survey of residents in the community. Survey forms were sent by postal mail to all residents in the community, with the following Yes/No question: "As a local homeowner, do you agree that there should be a restriction on the purchase of non-primary residential property in this community?" The resulting sample was comprised of the first 100 ballots mailed back to the polling company. Answer each of the following questions about the polling companys method of sampling for this survey, including a brief explanation for each answer: i. What type of sampling is this? (2 marks) ii. Would you expect the resulting sample to be biased or unbiased? (2 marks)

Answer 1

i. This is the convenience sampling type (Non-probability based sampling). because survey form were send by postal mail to all residents in the company and sample consists of only those resident of company who mailed back and belong to first 100 ballots. In this sampling procedure does not uses of random sampling. In this sampling the resident of company selected for survey because of their convenient accessibility. Hence it is convenience sampling type.

ii. We expect the resulting sample to be biased. because the sample consists of residents of company which are first 100 ballots mailed back to the polling company. This sample is not good representative of population. Hence it create sampling bias.