Answer to Question #55360 in Statistics and Probability for jocelyn

Question

In a large city school system with 20 elementary schools the school board is considering the adoption of a new policy that would require elementary school students to pass a test in order to be promoted to the next grad. the PTA wants to find out whether parents agree with this plan. listed below are some of the ideas proposed for gathering data. for each indicate what kind of sampling strategy is involved and what if and bias might result.

a) put a big ad in the news paper asking people to log their opinions on the PTA website.
b) randomly select one of the elementary schools and contact every parent by phone.
c)send a survey home with every student and ask parents to fill it out and return t the next day
d) randomly select 20 parents from each elementary school and send them a survey and follow up with a phone call if they do not return the survey within one week.