Question

What’s Wrong with This Picture? The Newport Chronicle ran a survey by asking readers to call in their response to this question: “Do you support the development of atomic weapons that could kill millions of innocent people?” It was reported that 20 readers responded and that 87% said “no,” while 13% said “yes.” Identify four major flaws in this survey.

Short answer

The four flaws are:

• Small sample size
• Misleading question
• Incorrect responses
• Voluntary sampling response

Step-by-step solution

Given information

The question of the survey is, “Do you support the development of atomic weapons that could kill millions of innocent people?”

The number of self-participating respondents is 20.

The percentage of responses is 87% for no and 13% for yes.

Finding the flaw with the research question

The research question should be non-biased and not prompt for one type of response.

In this situation, the question prompts the respondents to select the response “no,” as it explicitly mentions the repercussions of atomic weapons but not the benefits.

Finding the flaw with sample quality

The responses are collected from only 20 readers. Thus, the sample size is too small for the study.

Also, the readers choose to respond to the survey; they are not randomly selected. This comes under the method of voluntary response sampling.

Thus, the sample is not considered as an appropriate representative of the population.

Finding the flaw in responses

Each set of 20 responses is equal to\(\frac{1}{{20}} \times 100 = 5\% \).

Thus, the responses are expected to be multiples of 5% (10%, 15%, 50%, etc.).

Conclusively, the four flaws are:

• The research question is biased.
• The respondents are voluntarily selected.
• The sample size is small.
• The responses obtained are incorrect.