[baandam]

It is a ridiculous and intellectually embarrassing question. I just picture what someone like Feynman would think of a question like this.

I wouldn't be shocked this is a higher order effect of too much of certain 20th century French philosophers. We can't even make test questions that aren't bullshit.

There literally should be a none of the above choice because of lack of information in the question.

[ghaff]

Eh. As someone who has been involved with survey work--both giving and receiving--standard practice in this situation would probably be A and it wouldn't shock me if it had been covered in class. D is not wrong and might be the right answer if, e.g., emailing out a survey to a broader mailing list of people who don't have a close affiliation with you--i.e. you don't want to pester a general population. However, A is pretty much what is done for employee satisfaction surveys and things of that type.

[peteradio]

Is it a test on the trivia of typical survey conduct or a question to probe understanding of statistics? If its a trivia question then ask it like "What is the most likely way a survey would followup in the event of ...".

[raymondh]

I think Feynman would be pleased with question. He was well grounded in the real world of doing science with incomplete datasets. For researchers who gather data with surveys, this is a frequently encountered problem, so it is legitimate to discuss it an statistics course.

If there is a problem, it is the multiple choice format. This issue of handling incomplete datasets would be make a good essay question.

That said, it is perfectly reasonable to choose D and work with the information you have. That is what real world clinic studies do when they report the number of people who dropped out of a study.

It is also reasonable to choose A and attempt to get better coverage. That is what real world election pollsters do.

[dmix]

It's a homework question not a test question

The philosophical part might be the point

[csours]

Philosophy of X is how we talk about X, the terminology and the state of our understanding. Philosophy is a huge part of learning, but we usually don't call it philosophy.

[tyingq]

That would make sense if there was a freeform "why did you give this answer" section. As a multiple-choice question, there's nothing you can infer about the answer.

[dsfyu404ed]

Or maybe it was a control question and the teacher is going to treat the spread of results as their own little survey...