1.5 Collecting Data: Sampling and Related Issues
Once you decide on the type of data—quantitative or qualitative—appropriate for the problem at hand, you’ll need to collect the data. Generally, you can obtain data in three different ways:
From a published source
From a designed experiment
From an observational study (e.g., a survey)
Sometimes, the data set of interest has already been collected for you and is available in a published source, such as a book, journal, or newspaper. For example, you may want to examine and summarize the divorce rates (i.e., number of divorces per 1,000 population) in the 50 states of the United States. You can find this data set (as well as numerous other data sets) at your library in the Statistical Abstract ...
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