The Study of Princeton Review - Essay Example

Q1 Princeton Review works together with school administrations to reach out to and invite them for the survey. First, it notifies the school administration of the intention to conduct a survey obtains students' contacts, and uses them to inform and invite the student community about the survey through sending e-mails, notices, and internet social media. To incorporate a student’s opinion in the survey data, the student must complete all sections of the survey, which include about himself/ herself, school academics, student and life at school.

In addition, only one survey for each student per academic year per institution submitted through the prescribed medium like online or properly filled forms qualifies to be included in the sample data.Q2 The main reason why the results are regarded as being far from scientific is that in a scientific survey, a hypothesis is formed and data is collected to validate or invalidate it. Secondly, a scientific survey is driven by data, which is used to show similarities and patterns, and involves observations such as field studies rather than interview question surveys used by Princeton Review.

Thirdly, the scientific survey is conducted continuously and uses mathematical calculations supported by physical laws and principles in their fields, but this cannot be applied in the Princeton Review. Finally, the Princeton review does not use non-random samples of the populations in the collection of results. For example, if well-known individuals used to conduct such surveys, this affects the findings as it hinders the conducting of objective surveys in the university and does not reflect the views of the whole population thereby not being scientific.

Q3 Selection bias occurs when the interviewer selects specific individuals to participate in a survey to represent the whole population. It affects the objectivity of the sample because it makes respondents approve claims that they know are false just to satisfy the interviewer in a survey. This causes the twisting of survey research in the wrong way because of the method used to identify the sample population. For example, in IU, in an attempt to find out whether students get good financial aid from the administration, the interviewer can choose some students who have benefited from the same and this can cause subjectivity in their answers hence creating a wrong view of the university.

Q4 Response bias occurs when a survey respondent gives answers that they perceive the interviewer wants to hear not necessarily the truth. This can happen where there are discriminating questions, which are structured in a way, which motivates the respondent to respond in a particular manner. For example, the reefer madness questions for Clemson students could have asked, “How frequently marijuana is used in your school?” The choices either be “not frequently”, “Frequently” or “very frequently”.

This question may give the respondent only one option to respond on how marijuana is used frequently and it is response-biased.Q5 Sampling is a process of selecting a sample from a given population, researching them and generalizing the results to the entire population. The first problem in using statistics from a sample is that the sample data used can be highly unrepresentative of the university because there is no established method of evaluating the level of representation of the selected sample to the whole population.

This has adverse effects on the data results produced on the university population resulting in data having a margin of error. The other problem arises during the methods used to classify and select samples, as the survey can be biased with the samples selected to obtain results from the field. This can result in disparities in the opinion of the whole population from the biased samples selected. This can arise due to differences in preferences, cultures, beliefs and age.