Read the passage below and check your comprehension by answering the following questions. Then “submit” your work.
Imagine that you are an officer in your college’s alumni association. You have been asked to interview other alumni to contribute to marketing materials that will help increase the number and quality of students applying to your school. Your association wants to show how much graduates enjoyed their school experience and how well they have succeeded in their careers.
You produce a simple one-page survey that asks alumni to rate their school and their postgraduate experience from poor to excellent. You plan to mail the survey to everyone listed in the alumni register. You are hoping to produce marketing materials noting the high percentage of graduates who rate their experience as “excellent.” But when you submit your plan and survey draft to the alumni association, you are shot down. “We don’t want to hear from everyone,” says the alumni president. “We only want to hear from successful graduates who are working at Fortune 500 companies or who have made big names for themselves in the sciences.”
You are asked instead to create an in-depth survey and conduct it by phone with graduates who have donated $1,000 or more to the school in the past five years. You know that this will skew the results of your survey toward alumni who love the school and who have been financially successful since graduating. The association is asking you to present this information as though these alumni are representative of all graduates when they only represent a minority. You know that many graduates have gone on to successful and fulfilling, if less lucrative, careers in education and the arts. You are hesitant to conduct a survey that will paint an inaccurate picture of the school for prospective students. What should you do?