How Do Tertiary Students Assess Sampling on Social Contexts and Media Reports? Exploring Students’ Statistical Literacy With Relation to Sampling

Sampling is a foundational concept for a proper development of students’ statistical literacy. This paper focuses on the evaluation of Mexican tertiary students’ abilities to evaluate statistical conclusions or claims in relation to sampling found in a social and media report context. The SOLO taxonomy is used to evaluate the richness of students’ responses in relation to sampling for two scenarios. General results reveal students have trouble correctly identifying or calculating sample size for a given study and a tendency to accept claims based on inappropriate sampling, even if the selection method has an evident source of bias. Implications for teaching in relation to sampling and statistical literacy are discussed.