Question

Scenario 3: In an attempt to understand the nation's opinion on universal healthcare, investigators sponsored an advertisement during an American mid-moming news radio that asked viewers the following question: "Should everyone have healthcare? Weigh in tonight from 4 to 6pm. If yes, call 1-900-720-6181. fno, call 1-900-720-6182. Charge is 50 cents for the first minute." Consider the population that the investigators are trying to sample, do they obtain a representative sample from this sampling scheme? Specifically, what type of sampling scheme has been used? What type of sampling bias(s) may have occur? What else could be a source of issue when it comes to this scenario?

Answer 1

Here the population is the citizen of America. The investigator are trying to know about health concerns of the general people.I think the sampling procedure is not so effective, because of heavy number of non response. The sampling procedure is totally depended on the responder, and also added call charges , many people reluctant to give response. It is a probability sampling because there are some probabilities attached for every population units to comes out in the sample.

There are some drawbacks in the sampling scheme:

1) high amount of non response

2) there is no chance to verify about the validity of the answer (yes/no). So many fake response may comes out.

3) As the mobile number is not toll-free many people are reluctant to give response.

if whole procedure will conduct by the investigator himself instead of the above method, it will be more effective.