Explain why a sample chosen from magazine subscription lists, automobile registration lists, phone books, and club membership lists was not representative of the population of the United States

Answer 1

Subscription lists are usually not representative of a population at large as they imply that individuals who subscribe have specific interests which, in general, are not shared by the entire population. Of course, some subscription lists could be narrower than others, but overall subscription lists cause issues.

Same for club memberships. Think for instance of a very exclusive golf club where the initiation fee could be $300,000!! The sample would consists only of high net worth individuals and would not represent the population.

Phone books are a bit trickier, but in this day and age, most people, in particular younger people, no longer have a fixed line and therefore if we sampled from phone books, we would probably sample mostly elderly individuals and our sample would contain very few young persons.

Automobile registration lists contains people with certain features and not others as well. As a consequence, it could not supply a good way to sample from a population. However, there is list and list. Most people have automobiles, but if we are looking at lists of people who own luxury cars only, we would not capture a representative sample for the overall population.