In a survey of students from middle schools in a large city in the United States, the most popular type of music was hip-hop. Would it be appropriate to conclude that hip-hop is the most popular type of music for all middle school students in the United States?
(A) No, because hip-hop is not my favorite type of music.
(B) No, because middle school students from across the country should be surveyed.
(C) Yes, because the opinions of other middle school students would be similar.
(D) Yes, because hip-hop is my favorite type of music.
Standards
7.SP.1: Understand that statistics can be used to gain information about a population by examining a sample of the population; generalizations about a population from a sample are valid only if the sample is representative of that population. Understand that random sampling tends to produce representative samples and support valid inferences.
Correct answer and commentary
Student performance
The correct answer to this item is option B. The survey that is described in the item was conducted with students from middle schools in one city in the United States. In order to draw conclusions aboutall middle school students in the United States, the sample that was collected must be representative of all middle school students in the United States. Samples tend to be representative when individuals are randomly selected from the population of interest. Since the survey was only conducted in one city, middle school students in the United States from other cities did not have any chance of being selected, and therefore the conclusions drawn from this survey cannot be generalized to all middle school students.
Options A and D are incorrect because individual opinions do not determine which type of music is most popular among all middle school students. Option C was the most popular incorrect answer choice. This answer choice fails to recognize variability in the population of middle school students in the United States. Students from individual cities do not necessarily have the same taste in music as students from other cities, and not all cities were represented in the survey.