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 (Copeland 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
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.