The student government at a college is interested in determining how important intercollegiate sports are to the students there.
Because all students have e-mail accounts, the student government can send a survey to all the students. About 50% of the students respond. Which is the most likely bias in this sample?
In statistics, self-selection bias occurs in a situation where individuals select themselves into a group, leading to a biased sample with nonprobability sampling.
It is the problem that very always results when survey respondents are allowed to decide entirely for themselves whether or not they are interested in a survey. To the extent that respondents' propensity for participating in the study is correlated with the substantive topic the researchers are trying to study, there will be self-selection bias in the resulting data.
In most cases, self-selection will lead to biased data, as the respondents who choose to participate will not well represent the entire target population.
