A researcher is interested in the number of hours parents of pre-school children in the United States spend reading to their children. To investigate this, he obtains the student list from a local preschool and contacts at random the parents of 30 children from this list. Based on the parents’ responses, the researcher found that on average parents read 8.2 hours per week to their children, with a margin of error of 1 hour.
a) What is the population of interest in this problem?
b) What is the parameter of interest?
c) Would you expect the parents’ reports to generally underestimate or overestimate the amount of time they actually spend reading to their children? Explain.
d) How might the sample of 30 parents be unrepresentative of the population of interest? Explain whether your reason is an example of a sampling or non-sampling error.
e) One of the questions that the researcher asks on the telephone during response collection with the parents is “As a concerned parent, how many hours per week do you read to your children?” Discuss what issue(s) there may be with this question. Rewrite the question to reduce bias.