Basic Statistics for Criminal Justice Essay 1: Sampling Distributions
Your submission should be approximately 2-3 (minimum 2) pages long.
Write an essay that addresses each of the following questions. If you wish to include equations or statistical symbols, you can do so in Word using the Equation or Symbol menus on the Insert tab.
1. What is sampling? What is a representative sample? What can researchers do to increase the representativeness of their samples?
2. What is sampling error? How do we approximate it in our analyses — that is, what do we calculate, and what elements go into that calculation? What can researchers do to reduce sampling error?
3. What two pieces of information do we usually report when we present a mean? What does each indicate or mean? How are they calculated — that is, what pieces of information go into them?
4. What does alpha represent? Where (generally) does it come from? Do we want a large alpha or a small one? Why?
