Key Terms

1)  Questionnaire - A set of fixed-format, self-report items that is completed by respondents at their own pace, often without supervision.

2)  Response rate - The percentage of people who actually complete the questionnaire and return it.

3)  Population - The entire group of people that the researcher intends to learn about.

4)  Sample - The small group of people participating in the research that are representative of the population.

5)  Sampling frame - List of the all the people in the population.

6)  Simple random sampling - Choosing people from the population in a way which ensures each individual has an equal chance of being selected.

7)  Sampling bias - Occurs when two conditions are not met: a) a sampling frame is unobtainable, b) not all of the selected individuals are tested.  When a sampling bias is present, then the sample is not representative of the population.

8)  Distribution - The pattern of scores observed on a measured variable.

9)  Standard deviation - Indicates the spread of a distribution; a larger number indicates a greater spread and a smaller number denotes a smaller spread.
 

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