Question

Suppose we want to estimate household size, where a “household” is defined as people living together in the same dwelling, and sharing living accommodations. if we select students at random at an elementary school and ask them what their family size is, will this be a good measure of household size? or will our average be biased? if so, will it overestimate or underestimate the true value?

Answer 1

Asking the elementary students how big their family size is should give a fairly good picture of how many people live under the same roof for their family. Since it is for elementary students chances are that most of the child's siblings would still be at home, though some could be college age and not live at home anymore. Also, though  with the high divorce rate that has been evident at least in the 80's and 90's in North America, some members of the family ie fathers or mothers and some siblings may live in another household.