One of the questions on a survey of 1,000 adults asked if today's children will be better off than their parents (Rasmussen Reports website October 26, 2012). Representative data are shown in the file ChildOutlook. A response of Yes indicates that the adult surveyed did think today's children will be better off than their parents. A response of No indicates that the adult surveyed did not think today's children will be better off than their parents. A response of Not Sure was given by 23% of the adults surveyed. Click on the webfile logo to reference the data.

Question

a. What is the point estimate of the proportion of the population of adults who do think that today's children will be better off than their parents (to 2 decimals)?

b. At 95% confidence, what is the margin of error (to 4 decimals)?

c. What is the 95% confidence interval for the proportion of adult's who do think that today's children will be better off than their parents (to 4 decimals)?
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d. What is the 95% confidence interval for the proportion of adult's who do not think that today's children will be better off than their parents (to 4 decimals)?
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e. Which of the confidence intervals in parts (c) and (d) has the smaller margin of error?

Answer 1

a. The point estimate of the proportion of the population of adults who do think that today's children will be better off than their parents is 0.71.

b. At 95% confidence, the margin of error is 0.0332.

c. The 95% confidence interval for the proportion of adult's who do think that today's children will be better off than their parents is 0.6768 to 0.7432.

d. The 95% confidence interval for the proportion of adult's who do not think that today's children will be better off than their parents is 0.2568 to 0.3232.

e. The confidence interval in part (c) has the smaller margin of error.