An Introduction to Survey Research, Volume II

Carrying Out the Survey

Ernest L. Cowles, Edward Nelson

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781949991284
• eBook ISBN: 9781949991291
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Decision Making
• Index: Business

Survey research is a powerful tool to help understand how and why individuals behave the way they do. Properly conducted, surveys can provide accurate insights into areas such as attitudes, opinions, motivations, and values, which serve as the drivers of individual behavior.

This two-volume book is intended to introduce fundamentals of good survey research to students and practitioners of the survey process as well as end-users of survey information. This second volume focuses on carrying out a survey— including how to formulate survey questions, steps that researchers must use when conducting the survey, and impacts of rapidly changing technology on survey design and execution. The authors conclude with an important, but often neglected aspect of surveys—the presentation of results in different formats appropriate to different audiences.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Research starts with a question. Sometimes these are why questions. Why do some people vote Democrat and others vote Republican? Why do some people purchase health insurance and others do not? Why do some people buy a particular product and others buy different products? Why do some people favor same-sex marriage and others oppose it? Why do some people go to college and others do not? Other times they are how questions. If you are a campaign manager, how can you get people to vote for your candidate? How could we get more people to purchase health insurance? How could you get customers to buy your product? How could we convince more people to go to college? But regardless, research starts with a question.

Have you thought about how we go about answering questions in everyday life? Sometimes we rely on what people in authority tell us. Other times we rely on tradition. Sometimes we use what we think is our common sense. And still other times we rely on what our gut tells us. But another way we try to answer questions is to use the scientific approach.

Duane Monette et al. suggest that one of the characteristics of the scientific approach is that science relies on systematic observations.¹ We often call these observations data and say that science is empirical. That means it is data based. However, the scientific approach doesn’t help you answer every question. For example, you might ask whether there is a God, or you might ask whether the death penalty is right or wrong. These types of questions can’t be answered empirically. But if you want to know why some people vote Democrat and others vote Republican, the scientific method is clearly the best approach. Relying on what people in authority tell you or what tradition tells you or your gut won’t work.

Research Design

Your research design is your plan of action. It’s how you plan to answer your research questions. Ben Jann and Thomas Hinz recognize the importance of questions when they say that “surveys can generally be used to study various types of research questions in the social sciences.”² The research design consists of four main parts—measurement, sampling, data collection, and data analysis. Measurement is about how you will measure each of the variables in your study. Sampling refers to how you will select the cases for your study. Data collection is about how you plan to collect the information that you will need to answer the research questions. And data analysis is about how you plan to analyze the data. You need to be careful to decide on your research design before you collect your data.

In this book, we’re going to focus on data collection, specifically on surveys. The book is organized in two volumes. In the first volume we focused on the basics of doing surveys and talked about sampling, survey error, factors to consider when planning a survey, and the different types of surveys you might use. In the second volume we’ll focus on carrying out the survey, and we’ll discuss writing good questions, the actual carrying out of surveys, the impacts of current technology on survey research, and survey reporting.

Questioning (Interviewing) as a Social Process

Surveys involve asking people questions. Usually, this is referred to as interviewing, which is in some ways similar to the types of conversations we engage in daily but in other ways very different. For example, the interviewer takes the lead in asking the questions, and the respondent has little opportunity to ask the interviewer questions. Once the respondent has consented to be interviewed, the interviewer has more control over the process than does the respondent. However, it is the respondent who has control over the consent process, and it is the respondent who determines whether and when to terminate the interview. We discussed nonresponse in Chapter 3 (Volume I), “Total Survey Error,” and we’ll discuss it further in Chapter 3 (Volume II), “Carrying Out the Survey.”

Raymond Gorden has provided a useful framework for viewing the interview as a social process involving communication. Gordon says that this communication process depends on three factors: “the interviewer, the respondent, and the questions asked.”³ For example, the race and gender of the interviewer relative to that of the respondent can influence what people tell us, and we know that the wording and order of questions can also influence what people tell us. We discussed these considerations in Chapter 3 (Volume I), “Total Survey Error.”

Gorden goes on to suggest that the interaction of interviewer, respondent, and questions exists within the context of the interview situation.⁴ For example, are we interviewing people one-on-one or in a group setting? Many job interviews occur in a one-on-one setting, but one of the authors recalls a time when he was among several job applicants who were interviewed in a group setting involving other applicants. Rest assured that this affected him and the other applicants. Are we interviewing people in their homes or in another setting? Think of what happens in court when witnesses are questioned in a courtroom setting. That clearly affects their comfort level and what they say.

Gorden notes that the interview and the interview situation exist within the context of the culture, the society, and the community.⁵ There may be certain topics, such as religion and sexual behavior, that are difficult to talk about in certain cultures. Norms of reciprocity may vary from culture to culture. Occupational subcultures, for example, the subcultures of computer programmers and lawyers, often have their own language.

Norman Bradburn views “the interview as a microsocial system consisting of two roles, that of the interviewer and that of the respondent. The actors engage in an interaction around a common task, that of completing an interview.”⁶ He goes on to suggest that “there are general social norms that govern interactions between strangers.”⁷ Two of those norms are mutual respect (including privacy) and truthfulness.

It’s helpful to keep in mind that the interview can be viewed as a social setting that is affected by other factors, as is the case with any other social setting. In this book, we will be looking at many of the factors that affect the interview. We’ll look at the research that has been done and how we can use this research to better conduct our interviews.

Book Overview

Here’s a brief summary of what we covered in the first volume of this book.

• Chapter 1—Introduction—Interviewing isn’t the only way we can obtain information about the world around us. We can also observe behavior. We compared observation and interviewing as two different methods of data collection. We also looked at a brief history of social surveys.
• Chapter 2—Sampling—What are samples and why are they used? In this chapter, we discussed why we use sampling in survey research, and why probability sampling is so important. Common types of samples are discussed along with information on choosing the correct sample size and survey approach.
• Chapter 3—Total Survey Error—Error is inevitable in every scientific study. We discussed the four types of survey error—sampling, coverage, nonresponse, and measurement error, focusing on how we can best minimize it.
• Chapter 4—Factors to Consider When Thinking about Surveys—In this chapter some of the fundamental considerations about surveys were presented: the stakeholders and their roles in the survey process; ethical issues that impact surveys; factors that determine the scope of the survey; and how the scope, in turn, impacts the time, effort, and cost of doing a survey.
• Chapter 5—Modes of Survey Delivery—There are four basic modes of survey delivery—face-to-face, mailed, telephone, and web delivery. We focused on the critical differences among these different modes of delivery and the relative advantages and disadvantages of each. We also discussed mixed-mode surveys, which combine two or more of these delivery modes.

Here’s what we are going to discuss in this second volume.

• Chapter 2—Writing Good Questions—Here we look at survey questions from the perspective of the researchers and the survey participants. We focus on the fundamentals of the design, formatting, and wording of open- and closed-ended questions and discuss some of the most commonly used formats in survey instruments.
• Chapter 3—Carrying Out the Survey—Every survey goes through different stages, including developing the survey, pretesting the survey, administering the survey, processing and analyzing the data, reporting the results, and making the data available to others. Surveys administered by an interviewer must also pay particular attention to interviewer training.
• Chapter 4—Changing Technology and Survey Research—The chapter focuses on the impacts technology has had on survey research. As computers became widely available to the general public, survey platforms adapted to self-administered formats. Likewise, as cell-phone technology replaced landline telephones, survey researchers had to adapt to new issues in sampling methodology. Currently, rapid advances in mobile technology drive both opportunities and challenges to those conducting surveys.
• Chapter 5—Presenting Survey Results—In this chapter we talk about the last step in the survey process—presenting the survey findings. Three major areas, the audience, content, and expression (how we present the survey), which shape the style and format of the presentation, are each discussed along with their importance in the creation of the presentation. The chapter concludes with a discussion on how different types of presentations such as reports, executive summaries, and PowerPoints can be structured and how survey data and results can be effectively presented.

Annotated Bibliography

Research Design

• Matilda White Riley’s Sociological Research I: A Case Approach is an early but excellent discussion of research design.⁸ Her paradigm of the 12 decisions that must be made in constructing a research design includes the alternative methods of collecting data—observation, questioning, and the combined use of observation and questioning.
• Earl Babbie’s The Practice of Social Research is a more recent introduction to the process of constructing a research design.⁹
• Delbert Miller and Neil Salkind’s Handbook of Research Design & Social Measurement provides many examples of the components of the research design.¹⁰

Questioning (Interviewing) as a Social Process

• Raymond Gorden’s Interviewing: Strategy, Techniques, and Tactics is one of the clearest discussions of the communication process and the factors that affect this process.¹¹
• Norman Bradburn’s article “Surveys as Social Interactions” is an excellent discussion of the interactions that occur in interviews.¹²

CHAPTER 2

Writing Good Questions

More than four decades ago, Warwick and Lininger indicated that

Survey research is marked by an unevenness of development in its various subfields. On the one hand, the scienc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Writing Good Questions
• Chapter 3 Carrying Out the Survey
• Chapter 4 Changing Technology and Survey Research
• Chapter 5 Presenting Survey Results
• Notes
• References
• About the Authors
• Index