Question

You want to know the average number of emails that people receive per day. You decide to collect data by posting the question "How many emails do you receive per day?" to your public social media accounts.
Will your survey be biased or unbiased? Explain.


The results could be biased depending on who sees your survey.

The survey is unbiased because the sample will include at least 1 response.

The survey is biased because the sample will only include people who have an email address.

The survey is unbiased because your friends will participate.

Answer 1

"The results could be biased depending on who sees your survey."

Explanation: posting on your public social media produces a voluntary, non-random sample (coverage and self‑selection bias). Only people who follow or happen to see your post can respond, and those who choose to reply are unlikely to be representative of the whole population (e.g., certain ages, professions, or people with strong opinions or extreme email volumes are more likely to answer). That makes the estimate of the average number of emails per day potentially biased. A random, representative sampling method would be needed for an unbiased estimate.