In the mid-1980s, sociologist Shere Hite undertook a study of American women’s attitudes toward relationships, love, and sex by distributing 100,000 questionnaires in women’s groups. One of the questions was: Do you give more emotional support to your husband or boyfriend than you receive from him? A total of 4,500 women returned the questionnaire. An ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted at about the same time surveyed a random sample of 767 women, asking them the same question about emotional support.
a. Which survey would you expect to obtain a more representative sample of the population? Explain briefly. Of the 4,500 women who returned the Hite questionnaire, 96% said that they gave more emotional support than they received from their husbands or boyfriends. Of the 767 women interviewed in the ABC News/Washington Post poll, 44% claimed to give more emotional support than they receive.
b. Using only the poll corresponding to your answer to part (a), determine a 99% confidence interval for the relevant population parameter.
c. Write a sentence interpreting what your confidence interval reveals.
d. If you were to calculate the margin of error for both surveys (do not bother to actually do this calculation), which survey would have the smaller margin of error? Explain briefly.