Sampling _____ occurs when some members of a population are overrepresented or underrepresented in the data.

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Multiple Choice

Sampling _____ occurs when some members of a population are overrepresented or underrepresented in the data.

Sampling bias happens when the way a sample is collected causes some members of the population to be overrepresented or underrepresented. This creates a systematic error because the sample no longer reflects the population, so conclusions drawn from it can be misleading. For example, surveying only people who are reachable online may miss older individuals or those without internet access, skewing results about the whole population’s views. This is different from sampling error, which is the random mismatch between a sample statistic and the true population parameter that tends to shrink as the sample size grows. Variance describes how spread out the data are, and correlation describes a relationship between two variables, neither of which captures the issue of unequal representation in the sample.

Sampling bias happens when the way a sample is collected causes some members of the population to be overrepresented or underrepresented. This creates a systematic error because the sample no longer reflects the population, so conclusions drawn from it can be misleading. For example, surveying only people who are reachable online may miss older individuals or those without internet access, skewing results about the whole population’s views. This is different from sampling error, which is the random mismatch between a sample statistic and the true population parameter that tends to shrink as the sample size grows. Variance describes how spread out the data are, and correlation describes a relationship between two variables, neither of which captures the issue of unequal representation in the sample.

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