Chapter 1, Problem 1.23AC

The registrar of a university with a population of $N=4,000$ full-time students is asked by the president to conduct a survey to measure satisfaction with the quality of life on campus. The following table contains a breakdown of the 4,000 registered full-time students, by gender and class designation:

The registrar intends to take a probability sample of $n=200$ students and project the results from the sample to the entire population of full-time students.

1. If the frame available from the registrar’s files is an alphabetical listing of the names of all $N=4,000$ registered full-time students, what type of sample could you take? Discuss.
2. What is the advantage of selecting a simple random sample in (a)?
3. What is the advantage of selecting a systematic sample in (a)?
4. If the frame available from the registrar’s files is a list of the names of all $N=4,000$ registered full-time students compiled from eight separate alphabetical lists, based on the gender and class designation breakdowns shown in the class designation table, what type of sample should you take? Discuss.
5. Suppose that each of the $N=4,000$ registered full-time students lived in one of the 10 campus dormitories. Each dormitory accommodates 400 students. It is college policy to fully integrate students by gender and class designation in each dormitory. If the registrar is able to compile a listing of all students by dormitory, explain how you could take a cluster sample.