Question 43·Easy·Evaluate Statistical Claims: Observational Studies and Experiments
A school newspaper maintains an email list for students who subscribe to its Food section. The editors randomly selected 300 subscribers from this list and asked whether the cafeteria should add more vegetarian options. Of those surveyed, 78% responded "yes."
Which of the following inferences can appropriately be drawn from this survey result?
For statistics and inference questions, first identify who was sampled and what larger group (population) that sample represents. You can safely generalize only from a random sample to its corresponding population, not to unrelated groups like "all students." Next, check exactly what was measured (opinions vs. actions, current vs. future behavior) and avoid answer choices that go beyond that. Finally, be very cautious with options that claim one thing causes another; unless there was a randomized experiment with treatment and control groups, the SAT will not support a causal conclusion—only an association or description of the sampled group.
Hints
Focus on the population
Look closely at who was surveyed. Are they a random sample of all students, or a specific group of students?
Limit your conclusion to the sampled group
On the SAT, you can only generalize from a random sample to the larger group that sample came from, not to everyone else. Which answer choice stays within that group?
Watch for overclaims about behavior or causation
Did the survey measure actual food choices or just opinions? And was there any experiment or control group that would justify saying one thing causes another?
Step-by-step Explanation
Identify who was actually surveyed
Read the setup carefully: the editors "randomly selected 300 subscribers" from the Food section email list and asked them a question. That means:
- The sample is 300 Food-section subscribers.
- The population we can potentially infer about is all subscribers to the Food section (the whole email list), not every student in the school.
Understand what question was asked and what result was found
The question was whether the cafeteria should add more vegetarian options (a yes/no opinion question). Of the 300 subscribers surveyed, 78% said "yes".
This means a large majority of the sampled Food-section subscribers support adding more vegetarian options. With a random sample, we can reasonably infer that most Food-section subscribers overall feel similarly, but we should not make claims beyond that group.
Check which answer choices go beyond the population or the data
Now compare each option to what the survey actually supports:
- If a choice talks about all students at the school, it goes beyond the group we sampled.
- If a choice makes a statement about what people will do in the future (like choosing certain foods), it goes beyond what was asked.
- If a choice claims that reading the Food section causes support, that is a causal claim, which a simple survey cannot justify.
Match the valid conclusion to the correct choice
The only safe inference is that among the Food-section subscribers, most support adding more vegetarian options, based on the 78% "yes" response from a random sample of that group. This corresponds to: “Most subscribers to the Food section support adding more vegetarian options.”