Of the people whose highest level of education was a bachelor's degree who reported job satisfaction, 1,000 people were randomly selected to complete a follow-up survey in which they were asked about their salary satisfaction. There were 658 people in this follow-up sample who said that they were satisfied with their salaries, and the other 342 people were not satisfied. Using the data from both the initial survey and the follow-up survey, which of the following statements is most likely true?
A. Approximately 16 million people with bachelor's degrees would report salary satisfaction.
B. Approximately 24 million people with bachelor's degrees would report salary satisfaction.
C. Approximately 47 million people with bachelor's degrees would report salary satisfaction.
D. Approximately 72 million people with bachelor's degrees would report salary satisfaction.
Answer:A
Of the people whose highest level of education was a bachelor's degree who reported job satisfaction, 1,000 people were randomly selected to complete a follow-up survey in which they were asked about their salary satisfaction. There were 658 people in this follow-up sample who said that they were satisfied with their salaries, and the other 342 people were not satisfied. Using the data from both the initial survey and the follow-up survey, which of the following statements is most likely true?
A. Approximately 16 million people with bachelor's degrees would report salary satisfaction. B. Approximately 24 million people with bachelor's degrees would report salary satisfaction. C. Approximately 47 million people with bachelor's degrees would report salary satisfaction. D. Approximately 72 million people with bachelor's degrees would report salary satisfaction.
Explanation: A All of the answer choices refer to the number of salary-satisfied bachelor's-degree-holders, so you must use the follow-up survey results to calculate that number. First, find the percent of bachelor's-degree-holders who reported also being salary-satisfied in the follow-up survey. This number was 658 out of the 1,000 people, so divide 658 by 1,000 and then multiply by 100 to get the percent. The result is 65.8% salary-satisfied bachelor's-degree-holders for the follow-up survey. Since the people in the follow-up were randomly selected, you can assume that they are generally representative of the bachelor's-degree-holding population at large. Therefore, the 65.8% of salary-satisfied individuals should be true of all 24,236,000 job-satisfied bachelor's-degree-holders. Watch the units on charts-this one is in the thousands, so there are 24,236,000 not 24,236 job-satisfied bachelor's-degree-holders. Multiply 65.8%, or .658, by the total number of bachelor's-degree-holders, 24,236,000, to find that there should be 15,947,288 salary-satisfied, job-satisfied bachelor's-degree-holders. Choice (A) is the closest to this and is the credited response.