Determine whether the survey question is biased. If the questi...

Question

Determine whether the survey question is biased. If the question is biased, suggest a better wording.

How does the media influence the opinions of voters?

Accepted Answer

Welcome back, everyone. In this problem, a survey question reads, how does learning statistics make you a better decision maker? Is this question biased? And if so, which of the following has a better unbiased alternative? A says the question is unbiased as written. B says the question is biased, and the new survey question could be in what ways does learning statistics improve your decision making skills? C says the question is biased, and a new survey question could be do you think learning statistics affects your decision making skills? Why or why not? And this is the question is biased or a new survey question could be why is statistics important for making good decisions. Now, let's focus on the original question. How does learning statistics make you a better decision maker? Well, does it? The way this question is worded, it assumes that learning statistics makes you a better decision maker, which introduces bias. In other words, the moment you read this question, you're going to start asking yourselves, how does it make you a better decision maker? Uh thinking or assuming that it actually does. You try to start finding reasons for it. So the question is biased. The que no, we need to know which of the following is a better unbiased alternative. Answer choice A says the question is unbiased, so we know that's incorrect. In answer choice B, it says the question is biased and a new question could be in what ways does learning statistics improve your uh decision making skills. Again, this alternative is biased because it assumes that improvement occurs. So B could not be the correct answer. In answer to I see it says the question is biased and a new question could be do you think learning statistics affects your decision making skills? Why or why not? Well, in this one, notice here it first as if it affects your decision making skills. So the answer could either be a positive or a negative response or it could even be no effect. Then it asks why or why not. So it asks for an explanation. Therefore, this is an unbiased alternative. C is the correct answer. We can be sure we're right if we consider answer choice B. Indeed, it says the question is biased, and a new question could be why statistics important for making good decisions. But again, in this one, it assumes that statistics is important for good decision making, thus introducing bias. So that's how we're sure that answer choice C is the correct answer. Thanks a lot for watching everyone. I hope this video helped.

Determine whether the survey question is biased. If the question is biased, suggest a better wording.
How does the media influence the opinions of voters?

Key Concepts

Survey Bias

Media Influence

Question Wording

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