Question: Cosmopolitan magazine (Cosmo as it's known popularly) publishes many of its well-known quizzes on its Web site. One quiz, aimed at heterosexual women, is titled "Are You Way Too Obssessed with Your Ex?" The quiz poses situations for which participants must choose how they'd act from among three limited options. A question about "your rebound guy" offers these three choices: "any random guy who will take your mind off the split," "a doppelgänger of your ex," and "the polar opposite of the last guy you dated." Consider whether you want to use the quiz data to determine how obsessed women are with their exes.
a. Describe the typical person who might respond to this quiz. How might data from such a sample be biased, even with respect to the overall Cosmo readership?
b. What is the danger of relying on volunteer samples in general?
c. What other problems do you see with this quiz? Comment on the types of questions and responses.