A survey administered to a sample drawn from a local community finds that a person's political party affiliation is related to whether or not the individual favors an increase in local sales tax (the headline of a newspaper story based on this poll reads: "Republicans support proposed tax increase"). This is an example of the use of________.
A) univariate descriptive statistics.
B) inferential statistics.
C) multivariate descriptive statistics.
D) reductionist statistics.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The survey results suggest a relationship between political party affiliation and support for a proposed tax increase, which implies a causal effect that cannot be attributed to chance alone. Therefore, inferential statistics should be used to test the significance of this relationship and draw conclusions about the larger population. Univariate descriptive statistics would only describe the characteristics of one variable at a time, while multivariate descriptive statistics would examine the relationships among multiple variables without testing for significance. Reductionist statistics is not a recognized term in statistics.

A Survey Administered to a Sample Drawn from a Local