The Princeton Review - Research Paper Example

Q1 The survey cannot be conducted without invitation to take part. Princeton review works closely with school administrations to facilitate invitation of students. First, the school administration is notified of the intention to conduct the survey and contacts of students are obtained from the administration. These contacts are used to communicate and inform the students’ fraternity about the survey. This information can also be passed to the students using other mediums such as posters, and internet social media.

However, the most common method used to invite students to participate in the survey is through sending e-mail to them. This method is so far the most effective method of inviting students to take part in the survey. For a student’s opinion to be included in the surveys data, it must be submitted through the prescribed medium like online. In addition, only one survey for each student per academic year per institution qualifies to be included in the sample data. In addition, the student must complete all sections of the survey, which include about yourself, the school academics, student and life at school.

Q2 The results collected from the survey data may not be scientific. This is because the survey is conducted on a continuous basis and the results are used in subsequent rankings. This can affect the results because there can be differing answers due to the change in situations in the learning institutions. However, the main reason why the results can be said to be far from scientific is due to the process, which the data is collected. First, scientific data gathering is based on hypothesis and data driven science.

In scientific survey, a hypothesis is formed, and the data collected to prove or disapprove the hypothesis. In addition, scientific surveys are data driven, and the data used to show patterns. They also involve observations such as field studies rather than surveys, which are used by Princeton review. In addition, in scientific surveys, there is use of calculations that are supported by physical laws in their fields but this cannot be relevant in surveys used by Princeton review. Lastly, collection of results does not use non-random samples of the populations.

For example, specific people are used to conduct such surveys, and this affects the findings relating to the entire population. This undermines objective surveys in the learning institutions and does not reflect the views of the whole population hence not being scientific.Q3 Selection bias occurs when the interviewer selects specific individuals to participate in a survey as part of the whole population. Selection bias makes the sample not to be objective in the survey since they may validate claims that they know are false just to satisfy the interviewer.

Therefore, selection bias causes a distortion of a survey research because of the method used to identify the sample, which can lead to wrong conclusions of the survey. For example, in IU, in an attempt to find out whether students enjoy parties, the questioner can choose some party favorites and they can be subjective in their answers hence creating a wrong opinion of the university.Q4 Response bias is a situation where a survey respondent gives answers that he/she thinks the interviewer wants to hear.

They give answers in a way they think the interviewer wants them to answer rather than the truth. This can happen where there are leading questions, which are structured in a way to induce the respondent to respond in a particular way. For example, the refer madness question for Clemson students could have asked, “How widely marijuana is used in your school?” the choices either to be “not widely”, “widely” or “very widely”. This question may give the respondent only one option to respond on how widely marijuana is used hence being response biased.

Q5 The survey is prone to use bias samples in getting data results from a given university. Therefore, this may not reflect the opinion of the whole university from the biased samples that can arise from clustering of the sample populations because of the huge university populations that cannot all be used in the survey. The samples used in the survey can also be highly unrepresentative of the university because there is no way of determining whether they are representative of their respective populations.

Hence, this will produce the wrong data statistics of the university.