students enrolled at the University of Wollongong;
substandard dwellings in NSW ;
entry scores of students entering the University of Wollongong.
In studies designed to generate data, populations are generally
thought of as being stable and unchanging. This allows researchers
to make inferences about a population based on the data that they
have generated as the result of a study because they assume that
the population has not changed over the course of the study.
The difference between a population and a unit
Identify the population and the unit
in the following scenarios.
SCENARIO
A survey was conducted to answer the question of
which important skills Australian university graduates
had developed while they were studying at university.
SCENARIO
Samples of water are taken from a river over a one
week period, at random times and locations, both downstream
and upstream from a nearby town, to establish the
effect of activities in the town on the acidity of
the river.
We define a specific population in terms of the information that
we want to obtain. If we want to make claims about all university
students in Australia, then that becomes our population, even
if we only collect our data from one university.
