Question 7.89

image 59. A survey of Internet users found that males outnumbered females by nearly 2 to 1. This was a surprise because earlier surveys had put the ratio of men to women closer to 9 to 1. Later, the article about the research states that surveys were sent to 13,000 organizations and that 1468 of these responded. The survey report claims that “the margin of error is 2.8 percent, with 95% confidence.”

  1. What was this survey’s response rate? (The response rate is the percentage of the planned sample that responded.)
  2. Do you think that the small margin of error is a good measure of the accuracy of the survey’s results? Explain your answer.

59.

(a)

(b) No. The response rate is so low that it is likely that those who responded differ from the population as a whole. That is, there is a bias that the margin of error does not include.