Higher June 2025 Paper 4 Q8
8 A town council are going to do a survey on how people travel to work or school and for how long they travel.
One day their interviewer stands outside the town railway station and chooses 20 people at random to form their sample.
Make three different criticisms or suggestions for improving the council’s method for selecting their sample. [3]
| Answer | Marks | Part marks and guidance | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Three correct and different criticisms or suggestions for improvement | 3 | We need three statements, only one from each category (in guidance) for 3 marks. B2 for two correct or B1 for one correct Different means different category Note : the same criticism and suggestion e.g. standing by station will only get people using trains and they should stand in the middle of town is only 1 mark | Categories:
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Appendix: exemplar responses for Q8
- Larger sample size
- Vary the time (hour or day)
- Vary the location e.g biased towards railway users
- No control over numbers of genders
- No control over numbers in age groups
| Response | Mark | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The sample size is too small (1) | 1 |
| 2 | 20 people is not enough (1) | 1 |
| 3 | Too few people (1) | 1 |
| 4 | Ask a wider group of people (1) | 1(BOD) |
| 5 | He only got a sample for one day (2) | 1 |
| 6 | Do School and work on different days(2) | 1 |
| 7 | Do this more than once because schools might be closed (2) | 1 |
| 8 | Only on one day(2) | 1 |
| 9 | Only in one place (3) | 1 |
| 10 | They assume they all travel by train (3) | 1 |
| 11 | Go to bus stop and other places(3) | 1 |
| 12 | Look at different modes of transport (3) | 1 |
| 13 | There may not be school students if school isn’t near a railway station(3) | 1 |
| 14 | It excludes other methods of transport (3) | 1 |
| 15 | Some people may not take the train to work or school (3) | 1 |
| 16 | Go to more than 1 location / area (3) | 1 |
| 17 | Ask random people in town centre(3) | 1 |
| 18 | Consider different factors such as gender (4) | 1 |
| 19 | Ask a variety of people (4 or 5) | 1 |
| 20 | They should select only workers or schoolchildren (5) | 1 |
| 21 | Use different aged people (5) | 1 |
| 22 | Use a stratified sample(4 or 5) | 1 |
| 23 | Survey the same amount of old people and young people (5) | 1 |
| 24 | He does not know who goes to work or school | 0 |
| 25 | They are going to different destinations | 0 |
| 26 | Use more interviewers | 0 |
| 27 | Go to the bus station | 0 |
| 28 | They can go nearer the workplace or school | 0 |
| 29 | They could do it online | 0 |
| 30 | They could fill in a questionnaire | 0 |
| 31 | Repeat the survey more than once | 0 |
| 32 | They only interview people who live in the town | 0 |
| 33 | Some people could be elderly | 0 |
| 34 | Do school and work on different surveys | 0 |
| 35 | Let people go to council and choose | 0 |