Determine whether the study is an experiment or an observational study, and then identify a major problem with the study. A sociologist has created a brief survey to be given to 2000 adults randomly selected from the U. S. population. Here are her first two questions: (1) Have you ever been the victim of a felony crime? (2) Have you ever been convicted of a felony?

Observational study.

Problem: "have you ever been convicted of a felony?", the problem with this question is that it is very likely that people that have been convicted will lie and answer "no" to this question.

Explanation:

In an observational study, researchers observe individuals without actually intervening on their conducts. There is no manipulation of the conduct that is observed. And the conclusion is reached by observation of the subjects.

An experiment is made when the researcher takes the individuals and manipulates the variables he's interested in. He makes hypothesis and draws conclusion based on the intervention he did.

1. In this example, the sociologist is using a survey, there is not going to be any manipulation of the conduct but he/she will rather just observe the answers of the participants and draw conclusions based on them.

2. Now, the second question says "have you ever been convicted of a felony?", the problem with this question is that it is very likely that people that have been convicted will lie and answer "no" to this question and therefore the data that the sociologist will gather will not be accurate.

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