The NF (normal form) that is considered the most preferable for relational database design is 3 NF. 3 NF, or Third Normal Form, is a level of normalization that organizes data into tables and columns to reduce redundancy and improve consistency. Normalization is a process that applies a set of rules or criteria to eliminate or minimize the anomalies or problems that may arise from inserting, updating, or deleting data in a database. 3 NF is achieved when a table satisfies the following conditions: - It is in 2 NF (Second Normal Form), which means that every non-key column depends on the whole primary key and not on any subset of it - It has no transitive dependencies, which means that every non-key column depends directly on the primary key and not on any other non-key column 3 NF is considered the most preferable for relational database design because it ensures that each table has only one purpose or theme and that each column has only one value or meaning. This helps avoid data duplication, inconsistency, and update anomalies. The other options are either lower or higher levels of normalization that are either less preferable or less practical for relational database design. For example, 1 NF (First Normal Form) is the lowest level of normalization that requires each column to have atomic values and each row to have a unique identifier; 4 NF (Fourth Normal Form) is a higher level of normalization that requires each table to have no multi-valued dependencies, which means that there are no columns that can have more than one value for the same primary key value; 2 NF (Second Normal Form) is an intermediate level of normalization that requires each non-key column to depend on the whole primary key and not on any subset of it. References: CompTIA DataSys+ Course Outline, Domain 1.0 Database Fundamentals, Objective 1.2 Given a scenario, execute database tasks using scripting and programming languages.