Learning Activity (Module 6)
The purpose of this activity is to have you practice integrating and applying key concepts
from Chapters 6 & 7 to real-world polls and surveys.
1. Buzzfeed ran this survey about cheesy foods and invited people to vote. Source:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/raechilling/cheesy-food-showdown-2x863?origin=filwo.
a) From Chapter 6, list at least five issues that people who write polling questions
have to consider (for example, acquiescence bias). For each issue you list,
analyze whether the Buzzfeed questions are susceptible to this issue. Why or
why not?
Five Issues with
Briefly define each issue and indicate if the
writing survey
buzzfeed questions are demonstrating that
Questions
issue.
Response sets
-answering several questions the same way
Buzzfeed questions do not indicate this issue
Fence sitting
-choosing the middle-scale response
Buzzfeed does not indicate this issue
Socially desirable -trying to look better
Buzzfeed does not indicate this issue
Acquiescence
-always answering yes
Buzzfeed does not indicate this issue because the
questions are not yes or no
Self-reporting
-answering the questions based off what makes
more than they
sense if you don’t accurately remember
know
everything
Buzzfeed does not indicate this issue
b) About how many people appeared to participate in the Buzzfeed poll?
about 165 thousand
c) What kind of sampling do you think they used in this Buzzfeed poll? Explain your
answer?
The Buzzfeed poll uses convenient sampling because its participants are anyone who
finds the link to the poll online. The researchers are not actively picking a group of
participants and allow the participants to find them.
d) Can we generalize from this poll to our population of interest (Do we know what
our population of interest is?) Why or why not?
We do not know who the population of interest is because the poll is a convenient
sample. The poll does not identify the people who are taking it, and only the people who
come across the quiz on Buzzfeed through social media is taking it.