A survey is a study, generally in the form of an interview or a questionnaire, that provides information concerning how people think and act. In the United States, the best-known surveys are the Gallup poll and the Harris poll. As anyone who watches the news during Line campaigns presidential knows, these polls have become an important part of political life in(5) the United States. North Americans are familiar with the many "person on the street interviews on local television news shows. While such interviews can be highly entertaining, they are not necessarily an accurate indication of public opinion. First, they reflect the opinions of only those people who appear at a certain location. Thus, such samples can be biased in favor(10)of commuters, middle-class shoppers, or factory workers, depending On which area the newspeople select. Second, television interviews tend to attract outgoing people who are willing to appear on the air, while they frighten away others who may feel intimidated by a camera. A survey must be based on a precise, representative sampling if it is to genuinely reflect a broad range of the population.(15) In preparing to conduct a survey, sociologists must exercise great care in the wording of questions. An effective survey question must be simple and clear enough for people to understand it. It must also be specific enough so that there are no problems in interpreting the results. Even questions that are less structured must be carefully phrased in order to elicit the type of information desired. Surveys can be indispensable sources of information, but(20)only if the sampling is done properly and the questions are worded accurately. There are two main forms of surveys: the interview and the questionnaire. Each of these forms of survey research has its advantages. An interviewer can obtain a high response rate because people find it more difficult to turn down a personal request for an interview than to throw away a written questionnaire. In addition, an interviewer can go beyond written(25)questions and probe for a subject’’s underlying feelings and reasons. However, questionnaires have the advantage of being cheaper and more consistent. According to the passage, one advantage of live interviews over questionnaires is that live interviews
A. cost less
B. can produce more information
C. are easier to interpret
D. minimize the influence of the researcher
The need for birth control methods has developed fairly (36) , with the desire among many women to be able to (37) when they want to have a baby. At the same time there is a growing (38) of the problem of a rapidly increasing world population. This problem of a (39) world population is largely the result of (40) medical skills, which have (41) the death rate and at the same time raised the birth rate by increasing live births and the number of babies who (42) early childhood. There is a growing (43) that food production cannot keep pace with these increase, the result of which is that in some countries people are already starving to death. This problem is further complicated by the fact that in places like America and Europe, we obtain by trade and consume far more food and resources like oil than, say, the average India, (44) . World population is rising at rate of two percent a year; this means an addition of 70 million people a year to the present population of more than 3 500 million. (45) . The fastest growing region is Latin America which includes South and Central America and the Caribbean, while Africa and Asia closely follow Latin America. However, (46) .