Professional Documents
Culture Documents
CH4.Surveys and Interviews
CH4.Surveys and Interviews
Constructing Surveys
Measuring Responses
Important Considerations for Survey Items
Collecting Survey Data
Evaluating Surveys and Survey Data
Sampling
Probability Sampling
Nonprobability Sampling
Describe survey research.
Survey Research
What are the advantages of the survey approach?
Survey Research
What is the most important limitation of the survey
approach?
Survey Research
What are the major steps in constructing surveys?
Constructing Surveys
Describe the major question types.
Constructing Surveys
Describe the major question types.
Constructing Surveys
Difficulty with questions
• Many questions on surveys have problems in how they were written.
They can be ambiguous, too complex or double barreled.
• Ambiguous- people don’t understand what the question is asking.
For instance, the question, Have you ever considered the idea of
abortion?
• Too complex – use a double negative in a sentence or a word
whose meaning is difficult to understand. “I don’t usually dislike not
being alone.”
• Double barreled – two ideas are present in the question. Do you feel
the country is going in the right direction and the president is doing a
good job?
How do researchers analyze data from each
question type?
Constructing Surveys
Describe a nominal scale.
Measuring Responses
Describe an ordinal scale.
Measuring Responses
Describe an interval scale.
Measuring Responses
Which to choose
Measuring Responses
How should we select measurement scales?
Measuring Responses
What should you consider when creating survey
items?
To control for this, must mix up questions with some needed a “no”
response and some needing a “yes” response.
Example: I am happy most of the time.
I enjoy being with other people
When I can, I avoid noisy places.
http://www.cengage.com/resource_uploads/
downloads/0495092746_63626.pdf
Collecting survey data
• Written questionnaires
• Mail surveys
• Telephone surveys
• Internet surveys
• Interviews
• Focus groups
Written questionnaires
Sampling
Generalizability
Probability Sampling
Which are the main probability sampling methods?
Probability Sampling
Probability sampling
▪ quota sampling- Researcher has quotas she must fill for her
data, needs 50 white and black men to answer questions. Doesn’t
matter how they are selected, as long as you fill quota. Goes to Iona
College and gets first 50 white and black men that she sees to fill ut
her surveys.
▪ convenience sampling – using groups that happen to be
available, your class, your choir group. Is commonly used. Aslo
called accidental sampling.
▪ Nonprobability Sampling
Nonprobability sampling