A limited number of people from the population selected so that each person has an equal chance of being chosen.

• A. Representative sample
• B. Straw poll
• C. Random sample
• D. Push poll

Answer: (C)

Probability-based sampling is at work here: you pick a limited number of people from the population in a way that gives every individual an equal chance of being chosen. That equal-probability method is what makes a random sample. Because each person could have been selected, the group is more likely to reflect the population as a whole, allowing us to infer opinions or characteristics back to the larger group with a known margin of error.

This distinguishes a true random sample from other approaches. A straw poll relies on people volunteering or self-selecting, which skews results toward those who choose to respond. A push poll is designed to influence answers under the pretense of polling, which biases the results. A representative sample describes a sample that mirrors population traits, but the key mechanism to achieve that mirroring in a scientific sense is the equal-chance selection of individuals, i.e., random sampling.