Estimation is the process of approximating something about a larger population using a measurement from a smaller sample. An estimator is a sample statistic used to estimate a population value. Estimation is very common in the social sciences and in the media. For example, during elections, people often use polls taken from smaller samples to estimate how the national, state, or local populations will vote. Estimators can be selected according to two criteria: bias and efficiency. An estimator is said to be biased or unbiased? if the options are standard error of sample means, standard deviation of the sample, mean of sampling distribution of sample means, variance of the sample means is equal to the population mean. Given two unbiased estimators of the same population value, the estimator with the options are larger population value, larger standard deviation of sample means, smaller population value, smaller standard deviation of sample means. has higher efficiency. A sociology researcher plans to administer a questionnaire to measure racism in her community. The participant would respond to each statement in the questionnaire with a rating on a 5-point Likert scale, with 0 equaling strongly disagree and 5 equaling strongly agree. The overall score for each participant is the mean of his or her ratings for the different statements on the questionnaire. A high mean score indicates more racism. Assume the professor is thinking of working with one of two research firms. Firm A works with sample sizes of 500, and Firm B works with sample sizes of 10,000. Which firm should be able to provide a more efficient estimator? Firm A Firm B