Question

A pharmaceutical company wants to study the effectiveness of a new drug in treating migraine headaches. For its trial, it gathers randomly selected volunteers regardless of their age, gender, or race. Is this an appropriate, random sample on which the pharmaceutical company can rely to draw its conclusions?(1 point)
Responses

There is not enough information to determine whether this is an appropriate, random sample for the population in this scenario.
There is not enough information to determine whether this is an appropriate, random sample for the population in this scenario.

Yes, this is an appropriate, random sample.
Yes, this is an appropriate, random sample.

No, this is not an appropriate, random sample. The company should only run the trial on female volunteers because migraine headaches are more common in women.
No, this is not an appropriate, random sample. The company should only run the trial on female volunteers because migraine headaches are more common in women.

No, this is not an appropriate, random sample. The company should only run the trial on volunteers age 50 and older.

Answer 1

There is not enough information to determine whether this is an appropriate, random sample for the population in this scenario.

Explanation: saying they "gather randomly selected volunteers" is ambiguous — volunteers may be a self‑selected group (volunteer bias) and we need to know the sampling frame and the target population. Also for a trial you need proper random assignment to treatment/placebo and adequate representation of subgroups if you want generalizable results. Without those details you cannot judge appropriateness.