The placement office at a university has hired you to assist it in determining the size of starting salaries and the range of salary offers received by graduating seniors. The placement office has always gathered some information in this regard; historically, some seniors have come in to report the name of the company for which they are going to work and the amount of their starting salary. The office feels that these statistics may be biased, and thus it wants to approach the task more systematically. This is why it has hired you to determine what the situation was with respect to last year's graduating seniors.
a. Describe how you would select a sample of respondents to answer the question of starting salaries. Why would you use this particular sample?
b. What types of errors might you expect to encounter with your approach, and how would you control for them?