Statistics survey...help?

I’m interested in studying the relationship between college students over the age of 18 who smoke per week and the number of hours spent exercising. If a person smokes more and more, their exercising habits gradually decrease because their health is deteriorating. The results of the study will provide some insight on whether smoking has a negative or positive effect on exercising.





3. The overall population for my survey are college students,





Should I be surveying college students at my school or College students in the US?





4. The variable that would be measured is, ‘how many times a student smokes per week’ (quantitative, discrete).





The 2nd variable to be measured is, ‘how many times per week do they exercise’ (quantitative, discrete).





Does it matter how much time they spend each time they exercise?





The qualitative information in my survey will be ‘age’.


Why is age a qualitative variable?

Statistics survey...help?
Let me address the sample. To have statistical validity you will need a random sample. To get a random sample at your school you need only to select students in such a manor that everyone has an equally likely chance of being selected, such as obtaining a list of the student body and selecting eery nth person on the list. then making the effort of getting the data from each of these people.





It is more rewarding to have a random sample of US college students but much more difficult. So that each student would be equally likely one might design a method of first selecting the college or university, since each college or university has a different sized student body, the selection of universities would need to be weighted so the larger colleges universities would be proportionally more likely to be selected. Once a college or university is selected you would need a random method of selecting a student in that particular institution.


In my opinion this is by far the most important consideration, obtaining a random sample. Once that method is designed, you can address the question of exercise regarding smoking and if exercising at all and how often is what you want to study or do you wish to have a quantitative component to the smoking and exercise.