PUB TYPE Reports Evaluative (142) Speeches/Meeting Papers (150)

Two studies investigated upper elementary school students' informal understanding of sampling issues in the context of interpreting and evaluating survey results. The specific focus was on the children's evaluation of sampling methods and means of drawing conclusions from multiple surveys. In Study 1, 17 children were individually interviewed to categorize children's conceptions. In Study 2, 110 children completed paper-and-pencil tasks to confirm the response categories identified in Study 1 and to determine the prevalence of the response categories in a larger sample. Children evaluated sampling methods focusing on potential for bias, fairness, practical issues, or results. All children used multiple types of evaluation rationales, and the focus of their evaluations varied somewhat by context and type of sampling method (restricted, self-selected, or random). Children used affective (fairness) rationales more often in school contexts and rationales focused on results more often in out-of-school contexts. Children had mor