Information Bias in Surveys

• Activity Number: 177
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 4, 2014 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): William Rybolt*+ and George Recck
• Companies: Babson College and Babson College
• Keywords: Experiential ; Learning ; Sustainability ; Responses ; Graphical ; Text

Abstract

To increase student interest and better hold attention during 95 minute classes, we introduced group activities into the classroom. Activities introduced during the probability and statistics portion of our introductory course included designing, administering, and analyzing surveys. To demonstrate the influence of biasing information on responses, we administered three separate surveys to over one hundred students. Part of each survey focused on sustainable issues, the other portion involved lottery numbers and unrelated topics. The questions were identical on all three survey versions. One version had the questions. One version had information in graphical form about an alternative interpretation of global warming. In the third version the alternative interpretation was in a written form. In the second portion of the survey, some questions had extra information designed to bias the responses. This presentation analyzes and interprets the results, illustrating when and how extra information introduces biases. The goal is to have students experience the role of extra information in altering their responses.