Concept Byte: Designing Your Own Survey

Use With Lesson 12-5

ACTIVITY

You have learned how to organize, display, and summarize data. In this activity you will explore methods of collecting data.

Suppose a statistician is trying to predict how a town will vote in an upcoming election. She could ask every person in the town, but this method takes too much time and work. Instead, she might rely on an information-gathering survey that is sent to only some people in the town. She can then use the results to predict how other people in the town might vote.

When you design a survey, you need to make sure that the people you survey are representative of the group you want to study.

Activity 1

Suppose you want to find out how many hours of exercise the students at your school get each week. At the school gym you ask everybody you see, “How many hours of exercise do you get every week?”

1. Will the results of your survey be representative of your entire school? Explain.
2. Is there a better location to conduct your survey?
3. Suppose you asked, “Do you work out every day like a healthy person, or are you a lazy couch potato who only works out once in a while?” Do you think the results of your survey would change? Explain your reasoning.

Activity 2

In this activity, you will design and conduct a survey.

4. Select a topic for your survey. You could ask about favorite sporting events, snacks, musical instruments, or another topic of your choice.
5. Writing What question will you ask? Will your question influence the opinion of the people you are surveying?
6. What group of people do you want to study? Are you going to ask the entire group, or just a portion of the whole group?
7. Data Collection Complete your survey.
8. Writing Summarize your results with a graph and a brief description.
9. Reasoning Are the people you surveyed representative of the group you want to study? Explain.

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