EXAMPLE 8.8

Assessing interest in Pilates classes. The Division of Recreational Sports (Rec Sports) at a major university is responsible for offering comprehensive recreational programs, services, and facilities to the students. Rec Sports is continually examining its programs to determine how well it is meeting the needs of the students. Rec Sports is considering adding some new programs and would like to know how much interest there is in a new exercise program based on the Pilates method.⁶ It will take a survey of undergraduate students. In the past, Rec Sports emailed short surveys to all undergraduate students. The response rate obtained in this way was about 5%. This time, it will send emails to a simple random sample of the students and will follow up with additional emails and eventually a phone call to get a higher response rate. Because of limited staff and the work involved with the follow-up, it would like to use a sample size of about 200 responses. It assumes that the new procedures will improve the response rate to 90%, so it will contact 225 students in the hope that these will provide at least 200 valid responses. One of the questions it will ask is, “Have you ever heard about the Pilates method of exercise?”