Reference no: EM131649090

Question: Death penalty, again. In the survey on the death penalty you read about in the chapter, the Gallup Poll actually split the sample at random, asking 510 respondents the question quoted earlier, "Generally speaking, do you believe the death penalty is applied fairly or unfairly in this country today?" The other 510 were asked "Generally speaking, do you believe the death penalty is applied unfairly or fairly in this country today?" Seems like the same question, but sometimes the order of the choices matters. Suppose that for the second way of phrasing it, only 54% said they thought the death penalty was fairly applied.

a) What kind of bias may be present here?

b) If we combine them, considering the overall group to be one larger random sample of 1020 respondents, what is a 95% confidence interval for the proportion of the general public that thinks the death penalty is being fairly applied?

c) How does the margin of error based on this pooled sample compare with the margins of error from the separate groups? Why?