The US National Dairy Council, a dairy advocacy group, conducted a survey that appears to show that 7% of Americans (which is about 16.4 million people) believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. This result was picked up and shared widely, including by CNN.com, the Washington Post, the Today show, and NPR (National Public Radio).³⁷ The goal of the survey was to find some fun facts to share and the advocacy group has not made the full survey results, or the sampling method, publicly available.

1. Do you think it is likely that there is sampling bias in this study? Without knowing how the sample was determined, can we know if it is appropriate to generalize to all Americans? Can you think of a way in which the sample might have been determined that would create sampling bias?
2. While we don't know how the sample was determined, interviewers on NPR were able to find out how the question was phrased.³⁸ Survey respondents were asked to select one option to the following: "Where does chocolate milk come from? (a) Brown cows, (b) Black and white spotted cows, (c) I don't know." Do you think the way the question was worded might have biased the results? Give a different possible way to word the question that might give more accurate results.