What percentage of U.S. brides keep their own names after marriage, as opposed to taking their husband’s name or using some modification (such as hyphenation) of her name and her husband’s? Researchers investigated this question by selecting a sample of wedding announcements in the New York Times newspaper (Kopelman et al., 2009). They found that 18% of a sample of 600 brides sampled between 2001 and 2005 kept their own names.
a. Identify the observational units and variable in this study.
b. Identify the population and sample in this study.
c. Identify (in words) the parameter of interest.
d. Based on how the sample was selected, do you have any concerns about generalizing the sample result to the population of all brides in the U.S. between 2001 and 2005? To what population would you feel comfortable generalizing the result? Explain.