Survey Methods

7 Key excerpts on "Survey Methods"

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  eBook - ePub

  Doing Research in Fashion and Dress

  An Introduction to Qualitative Methods

  • Yuniya Kawamura(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Visual Arts

    (Publisher)

  4 Survey Methods

  Objectives • To understand what a survey method is and what it consists of • To learn how to create a questionnaire • To learn how to conduct an interview • To examine how to choose a research sampling, to create a focus group and case studies • To recognize the importance of preparing graphs and tables using graphics software • To distinguish structured interviews from semi-structured interviews

  Almost everyone at least a couple of times in his or her lifetime must have answered surveys. Similar to ethnography discussed in Chapter 3, it is an obtrusive measure. Some of the answers in the survey method are converted into numbers and become quantitative, and therefore, the method has both quantitative and qualitative components. But in this chapter, I discuss the process before the statistical manipulation and after the statistical results are generated by professional statisticians, and I also cover some aspects of a survey method, such as how to formulate open-ended questions and closed-ended questions, to specify research population, to come up with a sampling population, and to create a focus group, among others. While surveys are often used by marketers and industry practitioners, academics also adopt the method.

  What is a survey method?

  A survey is a research method in which subjects respond to a series of statements or questions in a questionnaire or an interview. The survey is well suited to studying what cannot be studied directly by observation or participant observation discussed in Chapter 3, “Ethnography.” The survey involves asking questions about opinions, beliefs, or behaviors, and this method is most frequently used by quantitative sociologists, economists, and marketers, although their research goals may differ.

  For example, if we want to investigate whether there is a gender difference in terms of where men and women are more likely to buy clothes, we can take a survey and find that out. If a theory suggests that a person’s social class determines one’s taste in clothing/fashion, survey data can be collected to determine whether this might be true.

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  eBook - ePub

  Research Methodology

  Techniques and Trends

  • Umesh Kumar B Dubey, D P Kothari(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Chapman and Hall/CRC

    (Publisher)

  8 Survey Research

  DOI: 10.1201/9781315167138-8

  8.1 Introduction to Survey Research

  Survey research is one of the most relevant techniques basically used for collecting data. This method involves any measurement procedures that prominently include asking questions from respondents or the subjects selected for the research study. The term “survey” can be defined as a process that may involve an investigation or an examination or assessment in the form of a short paper and pencil feedback form to an intensive one-on-one in-depth interview. The method tries to gather data about people, their thoughts and behaviors, with the help of the questionnaire or other statistical tools.

  A researcher should at first explore all sources of secondary data and verify the possibility of their usage for the research at hand. But it may so happen that after a point, these secondary data, for making further marketing decisions, might prove to be inadequate or of no use to the researcher. In such cases, the researcher has to go in for primary data research employing survey research method.

  A survey cannot measure the behavior of people, but can trace a certain behavior to the perceptions, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and other personal characteristics of the respondent.

  8.2 Concept and Meaning of Survey Research

  The method of survey research does not involve any observation under controlled conditions, hence it is a nonexperimental. Descriptive research used for studying of large sample is one of the quantitative method. Population is referred to as the universe of a study, which can be defined as a collection of people or object, which possesses at least one common characteristic.

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  Handbook of Complementary Methods in Education Research

  • Judith L. Green, Judith Green, Gregory Camilli, Patricia B. Elmore, Patricia Elmore, Judith L. Green, Judith L Green, Gregory Camilli, Gregory Camilli, Patricia B. Elmore, Patricia B Elmore, Judith Green, Patricia Elmore, Judith L. Green, Judith L Green, Gregory Camilli, Gregory Camilli, Patricia B. Elmore, Patricia B Elmore(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  37 Survey Methods in Educational Research Mark Berends

  Vanderbilt University

  DOI: 10.4324/9780203874769-39

  With a dramatic increase in use over the past 50 years, administering surveys to samples of individuals, groups, or organizations is one of the most important basic research methods of the social sciences—serving important purposes in both the public and private sectors. Data from such surveys allow for monitoring important trends in society, testing our theoretical understanding of social processes, providing information to firms through market research, guiding politicians through polling of public opinion on key political issues and strategies, and providing key indicators of what is going on in our society.

  Conducting such surveys can be challenging. Who should answer the survey? Should the entire population of interest or just a sample? What type of survey should it be? What questions should be asked? How will we measure the key theoretical or policy constructs of interest? How will we analyze the data once we get the survey responses? What inferences can we make based on the analyses we do?

  These are the questions that are addressed in this chapter. The aim here is to provide an introduction to some key issues and concepts of survey research methods to pique the interest of those new to the field. The hope is that students new to the field will be interested in pursuing this line of work—developing as researchers from research naivete to methodological sophistication. In short, this chapter is a primer on survey research. Volumes of books and articles have been written on the subject, but this chapter is intended to provide an overview of the issues that beginning researchers will need to consider as they investigate social life through survey research methods.

  Survey research methods, although common, are not without their weaknesses. A host of other types of methods, both qualitative and quantitative, are useful for investigating social processes. However, even when relying on other methodological approaches (e.g., ethnographies, case studies, experiments), surveys can be an added tool to provide important information.

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  Content and Complexity

  information Design in Technical Communication

  • Michael J. Albers, Mary Beth Mazur(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  11 Applying Survey Research Methods to Gather Customer Data and to Obtain User Feedback

  Beverly B. ZimmermanMaribeth C. ClarkeBrigham Young University

  Documentation professionals frequently have to gather information about their users or obtain feedback from them. Much of this information gathering is based on a written or verbal question-and-answer process. Surveys can supplement other information-gathering methods such as focus groups, contextual inquiry, and case studies, and can be a cost-effective measure for helping documentation specialists obtain a broader sense of how users respond to products and documentation than they could develop from their own perspective.

  For example, surveys can be used to do the following: •  Acquire demographic information about customers, including their education or training, their level of computer software expertise, and the specific hardware and printer systems they use, •  Gauge attitudes or opinions about software, upgrades, and potential new features, •  Provide documentation writers with an understanding of the context in which a particular software product is used, •  Obtain evaluative information about the company or software that can be communicated to other stakeholders.

  In the past, documentation writers may have considered surveys to be too complex or too costly to be used for obtaining customer data, or they may have assumed that every survey required a trained statistician in order to be effective. Dillman (2000) pointed out, however, that these assumptions may no longer be correct as recent technological changes have expanded the opportunities for conducting surveys in less expensive ways and opened the possibility for people with limited research experience—such as documentation specialists and information designers—to do credible surveys.

  At the same time, however, simply listing a few questions on a form to be mailed to customers or to be placed on a web site isn’t enough to constitute an effective survey. Rose (1981) found that poorly written questionnaires were so overwhelming that many readers chose not to deal with them even when it meant giving up something they deserved and needed. Bagin and Rose (1991) reported that respondents complained about time-consuming surveys with complicated forms, unclear instructions, vague questions and requests for inappropriate information. The result was that these bad questionnaires and surveys cost companies untold dollars. MacNealy (1994) also found that poorly designed information-gathering forms drove up operating costs for businesses and other organizations. These results parallel those of Fisher (1999) who found users of online help complained about too technical language, too much superficial information, and inaccurate, incomplete, and out-of-date information. Faced with these problems, users had given up using the documentation, or worse still, had made costly mistakes in entering data.

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  Marketing Research

  Planning, Process, Practice

  • Riccardo Benzo, Marwa G. Mohsen, Chahid Fourali(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Moreover, in a digital age, use of mobile devices and smart phones can assist researchers in collecting large samples of quantitative data and in analysing it using advanced analysis software. Given that consumers are becoming more tech-savvy and search for products and services across multiple devices, data analytics and large-scale surveys can be used by marketing research and intelligence companies to analyse consumers’ search behaviour and report back to decision makers, such as insurance companies, telecommunications providers and entertainment firms.

  It is also possible for researchers to access survey responses through providers, such as Survey Monkey Audience, who have respondent banks that can become a ‘targeted audience’ depending on the targeting criteria of the research. Targeted audiences constitute respondents who become part of global contributing networks by voluntarily signing up with their profiles so that they can be invited to take part in surveys as needed and when they match the sample frame for a survey study (help.surveymonkey.com).

  Questionnaire administration methods

  In operationalising the survey methodology into a questionnaire, the key purpose is to translate the research objectives and the variables to be investigated into a set of questions that respondents can answer. These questions should inspire respondent co-operation by being specific, clear and at a language level that the research subjects can comprehend. At the backdrop, the questions should aim to minimise response error in providing the answers and in recording them. Given that the survey research method involves obtaining information by posing direct questions to a sample of the population of interest, this questioning can take place in writing, verbally or via the use of computers and technology. Depending on a number of factors, including the budgeted cost set for data collection, the time available and the required speed of data collection, the accessibility of the target sample and the accepted level of non-response, the researcher can choose from a number of methods, typified as:

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  Practitioner's Guide to Statistics and Lean Six Sigma for Process Improvements

  • Mikel J. Harry, Prem S. Mann, Ofelia C. De Hodgins, Richard L. Hulbert, Christopher J. Lacke(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  24 Survey Methods and Sampling Techniques 24.1 OVERVIEW We have previously introduced sample surveys and random samples. In this chapter, we explore these concepts in more detail and describe how to use a random-number table to select a sample. A sample statistic is a numerical summary measure calculated from sample data. The mean, median, mode, and standard deviation, when calculated from sample data, are called sample statistics. When the same numerical measures are calculated for the entire population, they are called population parameters. A population parameter is always a constant, whereas a sample statistic is always a random variable. Since every random variable possesses a probability distribution, each sample statistics possesses a probability distribution known as its sampling distribution. This chapter discusses sampling distributions for the sample mean and the sample proportion. These concepts form the foundation of inferential statistics discussed in previous chapters. 24.2 INTRODUCTION Small companies know each of their customers personally. With success comes growth and soon both company employees and decision makers loss these insights. Much of this occurs because of increased numbers; however employees tend to have information based on recent experience while the customer related knowledge of decision makers might have been gained decades ago. Use of carefully constructed surveys offers one way to improve knowledge and awareness of current and future customer requirements, needs, and desires. 24.3 THE SAMPLE SURVEY For practical reasons such as time, cost, and resource constraints, we usually analyze a portion (sample) rather than the entire target population. Thus, a sample survey gathers information from a portion of the population. A variety of methods can be employed to conduct a sample survey; these include personal (face-to-face) interview, telephone, mail, the Internet, or direct observation

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  Real World Research

  • Colin Robson(Author)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  A survey using questionnaires sent by mail will have a rather different time schedule. Repeat mailings, reminders, and so on, which are central to getting satisfactory response rates in a postal survey, take up a substantial amount of time. Internet-based surveys are increasingly popular and can reduce the time, but they have their own problems. S U R V E Y S A N D Q U E S T I O N N A I R E S 3 2 5 Designing surveys There is a sense in which surveys are a research strategy (i.e. an overall approach to doing social research) rather than a tactic or a specific method. In this respect a survey is a non-experimental fixed design, usually cross-sectional in type (see Chapter 6). However, many of the concerns of doing a survey are not related to overall strategic design as much as to highly practical and tactical matters such as the detailed design of the instrument to be used (almost always a questionnaire, largely or wholly composed of fixed-choice questions), the sample to be surveyed, and the goal of obtaining high response rates. Box 11.1 is couched in the language of a survey carried out by interviewers: those persons armed with clipboards and a questionnaire, who stop you in the street or knock on the front door and ask if you would mind answering a few questions. Other forms of survey are possible, including the self-administered postal (mail) survey, and, increasingly commonly, telephone and Internet surveys. Indeed, surveys are not necessarily restricted to the use of questionnaires. A traffic survey may be exclusively observational; a survey of the working life of lecturers in Steps in carrying out a small-scale interview-based questionnaire survey Activity Estimated number of days (likely minimum) 1. Develop your research questions, study design (including the sample selection for pre-tests and the main study), and initial draft of the questionnaire. 20 2. Perform an informal testing of the draft questionnaire.

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