Methods of Data Collection

A pharmaceutical company is interested in comparing three brands of pain relievers. The company wants to know if one brand is much better than the other brands in terms of mobility improvement. Three different groups of 30 people participate in the study. Each group gets one of the three brands of pain relievers. The improvement in mobility of these 90 people is recorded after 5 weeks of taking the medicine. What method of data collection was used?

• Observational Study

• Experiment

• Simulation

• Survey

Medical records of a group of long-time residents of a town are compared to the medical records of a group of long-time residents of another town. Researchers are curious to see if one town appears to be “healthier” in general. What method of data collection is used?

• Observational Study

• Experiment

• Simulation

• Survey

A group of 600 registered voters in a given county are asked how they intend to vote in an upcoming election. A summary of their responses is posted on a news web-site, and it is implied that this group is representative of all registered voters in that county. The responses are used to predict the outcome of the election. What method of data collection was used?

• Observational Study

• Experiment

• Simulation

• Survey

In a study to see if administering a medication orally or by injection makes a difference in how quickly people with back pain feel relief, a group of 400 adults suffering from back pain is divided into two groups. One group of 200 people is given the medication in pill form,  while the other group of 200 people is given the medication in the form of a shot.  Results for each group are compared to see if there is a difference in pain relief between the two methods. What method of data collection was used?

• Observational Study

• Experiment

• Simulation

• Survey

Students in a high school mathematics class decided that their term project would be a study of the strictness of the parents or guardians of students in the school. Their goal was to estimate the proportion of students in the school who thought of their parents or guardians as “strict”. They interview 350 students. What method of data collection was used?

• Observational Study

• Experiment

• Simulation

• Survey

Before determining if it was safe to return to classrooms in the fall of 2020, researchers used computer programs to determine how COVID would spread in classrooms with students sitting at different intervals apart in classrooms with and without open windows. What method of data collection was used?

• Experiment

• Observational Study

• Simulation

• Survey

A ______ is a way of learning about a group of people by having some of the people in the group answer questions. It might involve completing a form, completing a questionnaire online, participating in a personal interview, or answering questions over the phone.

An _________ is a type of study where a researcher uses observed information to learn about a group of individuals. The individuals being observed are specifically not interfered with aside from the measuring of their responses.

In an ______ a researcher deliberately imposes different treatments on different groups and then compares the groups to determine if there is any difference in a specific variable of interest

_____ is a way to model random events, such that the computer generated outcomes closely match real-world outcomes. By observing these outcomes, researchers gain insight on the real world.