Reference no: EM132374099
Hans conducts a study in order to investigate the following research question: What is the relationship between an individual's income level and his or her use of social media? He posts a link to a brief survey on his Facebook page and asks his friends to circulate the link to people they know, and for those people to circulate the link to people they know, and so on. After a few weeks he has over 500 responses to his survey and he closes his data collection.
His survey asks the following questions:
- What is your sex?
- What is your age?
- What is your annual salary?
- On average, how many times per week do you use Facebook?
- On average, how many times per week do you use Twitter?
- On average, how many times per week do you use Instagram?
Based on the information provided about Hans's study, answer each of the following questions.
a. Given his research question, has Hans used a descriptive or a correlational research design? How do you know?
- Han's used a correlational research design for his study. The reason we know this, is because Han's research question is looking to find a relationship between income level and use of social media.
b. Which type of non-probability sampling technique did Hans use to recruit participants?
- Han's used network sampling to recruit his participants
c. What problems can arise from the type of sampling technique used by Hans?
- With the use of network sampling, the data collected can result in some sampling bias due to it being a narrow scope and also because it is distributed to people known to either the researcher or friends of the researcher and so on. The sample can also become contaminated due to participants ability to talk with each other about the experiment which can be a threat to internal validity.
d. In his write-up of his study Hans makes the following claim:
"Having a low salary causes an individual to use social media more frequently than individuals with average or high salaries."
What is wrong with Hans's claim? Explain thoroughly.
e. Hans is interested in looking at differences between men and women so he randomly selected 200 men and 200 women from his total sample. After analyzing the data, he makes the following claim:
"Although for both men and women the relationship between salary and social media is negative (i.e., as salaries increase, social media usage decreases), there is a significantly stronger association for men than there is for women. This finding is highly generalizable to the population of men and women in the United States."
What is wrong with Hans's claim? Explain thoroughly.