Statistics Communication & Stakeholder Relations 3

Question 1

A stakeholder wants you to remove 'inconvenient' outliers to make the trend line look cleaner. What is the ethical response?

Accepted Answer

Investigate outliers for data quality issues but report results both with and without them transparently

Answer

Ethical practice requires investigating outliers, documenting decisions, and reporting sensitivity analyses rather than silently manipulating data.

Question 2

Which format is most effective for communicating uncertainty to a general audience in a written report?

Accepted Answer

Phrases like 'we estimate X, with a plausible range of Y to Z'

Answer

Pairing a point estimate with a plain-language range communicates uncertainty accessibly without requiring statistical literacy.

Question 3

A policy analyst asks which statistical test was used and why. What should the statistician's answer address?

Accepted Answer

The data type, distributional assumptions, and research question that guided test selection

Answer

Test selection rationale should cover data characteristics, assumptions, and how the test addresses the specific inferential question.

Question 4

A stakeholder is confused why two analysts got different results from the same dataset. Which explanation is most likely correct?

Accepted Answer

They used different analytical methods, assumptions, or preprocessing steps

Answer

Different modeling choices, variable coding, or handling of missing data can legitimately produce different results from the same raw data.

Question 5

What is the primary risk of presenting only statistically significant findings to stakeholders?

Accepted Answer

It creates publication bias and a misleading picture by omitting null results

Answer

Selective reporting of significant results inflates apparent effect sizes and misrepresents the overall evidence, a form of publication bias.

Statistics Practice Test