A New York Times article on public opinion about steroid use in baseball discussed the results of a sample survey. The survey found that 34% of adults think that at least half of Major League Baseball

(MLB) players “use steroids to enhance their athletic performance.” Another 36% thought that about a quarter of MLB players use steroids; 8% had no opinion. Here is part of the Times’s statement on

“How the Poll Was Conducted”:

The latest New York Times/CBS News Poll is based on telephone interviews conducted March 15 through March 18 with 1,067 adults throughout the United States. . . . The sample of telephone numbers called was randomly selected by a computer from a list of more than 42,000 active residential exchanges across the country. The exchanges were chosen to ensure that each region of the country was represented in proportion to its population. In each exchange, random digits were added to form a complete telephone number, thus permitting access to listed and unlisted numbers. In each household, one adult was designated by a random procedure to be the respondent for the survey.65

(a) Explain why the sampling method used in this survey was not a simple random sample.

(b) Why was one adult chosen at random in each household to respond to the survey?

(c) Explain how undercoverage could lead to bias in this sample survey.