Quantitative survey research methods
Methods in market research when:To know how many and/or how want to profile a target audience by determining what the audience has certain behaviors, behavioral intentions, attitudes,And knowledge related to the health concern, and whether inants predict behaviors at a statistically significant tative market research generally involves:A large group of people (usually several hundred), and. Structured questionnaire that contains predominantly closed-ended,To design and conduct a quantitative survey, you should consider from a survey expert. Together you will need to consider d to designing an appropriate sample, using valid and es, and conducting a pretest before the survey study is surveys are custom studies designed to answer a specific set ch questions. Some surveys are omnibus studies, in which questions about your topic to an existing s can be conducted face-to-face, by mail or telephone, or er. They can be self-administered or administered by an such as computer-assisted telephone interviewing or s via a web site can be survey involves a convenience sample (e. A mall can be collected and analyzed fairly survey involves a statistically valid random sample, the the sample can be generalized to the entire the response rate is high provide reliable (i. Repeatable) direction for ms and be anonymous, which is useful for sensitive ative research methods, surveys can include visual to pretest generalize your findings beyond your participant a limited ability to probe are willing to respond may share characteristics that to the a whole, creating a proportion of your target audience within a proportion of a target audience that practices a proportion of a target audience that recalls a ative and quantitative methods, see the qualitative/ to your method of interest in the tools for r 8 survey research: a quantitative 2008, the voters of the united states elected our first african american president, barack obama. We know about these trends in voter opinion because the general social survey (http:///gss+website), a nationally representative survey of american adults, included questions about race and voting over the years described here. Without survey research, we may not know how americans’ perspectives on race and the presidency shifted over these years. Survey fy when it is appropriate to employ survey research as a data-collection of you have probably taken a survey at one time or another, so you probably have a pretty good idea of what a survey is. Sometimes students in my research methods classes feel that understanding what a survey is and how to write one is so obvious, there’s no need to dedicate any class time to learning about it. This feeling is understandable—surveys are very much a part of our everyday lives—we’ve probably all taken one, we hear about their results in the news, and perhaps we’ve even administered one ourselves. What students quickly learn is that there is more to constructing a good survey than meets the eye. Survey design takes a great deal of thoughtful planning and often a great many rounds of revision. As we’ll learn in this chapter, there are many benefits to choosing survey research as one’s method of data collection. We’ll take a look at what a survey is exactly, what some of the benefits and drawbacks of this method are, how to construct a survey, and what to do with survey data once one has it in researcha quantitative method for which a researcher poses the same set of questions, typically in a written format, to a sample of individuals. Is a quantitative method whereby a researcher poses some set of predetermined questions to an entire group, or sample, of individuals. Survey research is an especially useful approach when a researcher aims to describe or explain features of a very large group or groups. This method may also be used as a way of quickly gaining some general details about one’s population of interest to help prepare for a more focused, in-depth study using time-intensive methods such as in-depth interviews or field research. In this case, a survey may help a researcher identify specific individuals or locations from which to collect additional is true of all methods of data collection, survey research is better suited to answering some kinds of research question more than others.
Quantitative survey methods
In addition, as you’ll recall from chapter 6 "defining and measuring concepts", operationalization works differently with different research methods. If your interest is in political activism, for example, you likely operationalize that concept differently in a survey than you would for a field research study of the same research is often used by researchers who wish to explain trends or features of large groups. It may also be used to assist those planning some more focused, in-depth some of the possible research questions you came up with while reading previous chapters of this text. How might you frame those questions so that they could be answered using survey research? 2 pros and cons of survey fy and explain the strengths of survey fy and explain the weaknesses of survey research, as with all methods of data collection, comes with both strengths and weaknesses. We’ll examine both in this ths of survey chers employing survey methods to collect data enjoy a number of benefits. This cost included printing copies of my seven-page survey, printing a cover letter, addressing and stuffing envelopes, mailing the survey, and buying return postage for the survey. We could double, triple, or even quadruple our costs pretty quickly by opting for an in-person method of data collection over a mailed survey. Thus surveys are relatively cost d to the benefit of cost effectiveness is a survey’s potential for generalizability. Because surveys allow researchers to collect data from very large samples for a relatively low cost, survey methods lend themselves to probability sampling techniques, which we discussed in chapter 7 "sampling". Of all the data-collection methods described in this text, survey research is probably the best method to use when one hopes to gain a representative picture of the attitudes and characteristics of a large research also tends to be a reliable method of inquiry. This is because surveys are standardizedthe same questions, phrased in the same way, are posed to all participants, consistent. Other methods, such as qualitative interviewing, which we’ll learn about in chapter 9 "interviews: qualitative and quantitative approaches", do not offer the same consistency that a quantitative survey offers. Assuming well-constructed question and questionnaire design, one strength of survey methodology is its potential to produce reliable versatilitya feature of survey research meaning that many different people use surveys for a variety of purposes and in a variety of settings. I repeat, surveys are used by all kinds of people in all kinds of professions. The versatility offered by survey research means that understanding how to construct and administer surveys is a useful skill to have for all kinds of jobs. Lawyers might use surveys in their efforts to select juries, social service and other organizations (e. Churches, clubs, fundraising groups, activist groups) use them to evaluate the effectiveness of their efforts, businesses use them to learn how to market their products, governments use them to understand community opinions and needs, and politicians and media outlets use surveys to understand their sum, the following are benefits of survey research:Weaknesses of survey with all methods of data collection, survey research also comes with a few drawbacks. First, while one might argue that surveys are flexible in the sense that we can ask any number of questions on any number of topics in them, the fact that the survey researcher is generally stuck with a single instrument for collecting data (the questionnaire), surveys are in many ways rather inflexible. Let’s say you mail a survey out to 1,000 people and then discover, as responses start coming in, that your phrasing on a particular question seems to be confusing a number of respondents.
At this stage, it’s too late for a do-over or to change the question for the respondents who haven’t yet returned their surveys. When conducting in-depth interviews, on the other hand, a researcher can provide respondents further explanation if they’re confused by a question and can tweak their questions as they learn more about how respondents seem to understand ty can also be a problem with surveys. Survey questions are standardized; thus it can be difficult to ask anything other than very general questions that a broad range of people will understand. Because of this, survey results may not be as valid as results obtained using methods of data collection that allow a researcher to more comprehensively examine whatever topic is being studied. General social survey respondents were asked, “if your party nominated an african american for president, would you vote for him if he were qualified for the job? Am not at all suggesting that such a perspective makes any sense, but it is conceivable that an individual might hold such a sum, potential drawbacks to survey research include the following:Strengths of survey research include its cost effectiveness, generalizability, reliability, and sses of survey research include inflexibility and issues with are some ways that survey researchers might overcome the weaknesses of this method? Cross-sectional surveys, provide an example of a cross-sectional survey, and outline some of the drawbacks of cross-sectional be the various types of longitudinal retrospective surveys, and identify their strengths and s some of the benefits and drawbacks of the various methods of delivering self-administered is much variety when it comes to surveys. This variety comes both in terms of time—when or with what frequency a survey is administered—and in terms of administration—how a survey is delivered to respondents. In this section we’ll take a look at what types of surveys exist when it comes to both time and terms of time, there are two main types of surveys: cross-sectional and longitudinal. These surveys offer researchers a sort of snapshot in time and give us an idea about how things are for our respondents at the particular point in time that the survey is administered. My own study of older workers mentioned previously is an example of a cross-sectional survey. I administered the survey at just one r example of a cross-sectional survey comes from aniko kezdy and colleagues’ study (kezdy, martos, boland, & horvath-szabo, 2011)kezdy, a. These researchers administered a single, one-time-only, cross-sectional survey to a convenience sample of 403 high school and college students. The survey focused on how religious attitudes impact various aspects of one’s life and health. The researchers found from analysis of their cross-sectional data that anxiety and depression were highest among those who had both strong religious beliefs and also some doubts about religion. Yet another recent example of cross-sectional survey research can be seen in bateman and colleagues’ study (bateman, pike, & butler, 2011) of how the perceived publicness of social networking sites influences users’ n, p. That is, there was a negative relationship between perceived publicness of a social networking site and plans to self-disclose on the problem with cross-sectional surveys is that the events, opinions, behaviors, and other phenomena that such surveys are designed to assess don’t generally remain stagnant. Thus generalizing from a cross-sectional survey about the way things are can be tricky; perhaps you can say something about the way things were in the moment that you administered your survey, but it is difficult to know whether things remained that way for long after you administered your survey. Think, for example, about how americans might have responded if administered a survey asking for their opinions on terrorism on september 10, 2001. But researchers must remember what they have captured by administering a cross-sectional survey; that is, as previously noted, a snapshot of life as it was at the time that the survey was way to overcome this sometimes problematic aspect of cross-sectional surveys is to administer a longitudinal survey.
Longitudinal surveyssurveys that enable a researcher to make observations over some extended period of time. Are those that enable a researcher to make observations over some extended period of time. We’ll discuss all three types here, along with another type of survey called retrospective. Retrospective surveys fall somewhere in between cross-sectional and longitudinal are panel surveysa type of longitudinal survey in which a researcher surveys the exact same sample several times over a period of time.. Unlike in a trend survey, in a panel survey the same people do participate in the survey each time it is administered. Imagine trying to administer a survey to the same 100 people every year for, say, 5 years in a row. Keeping track of where people live, when they move, and when they die takes resources that researchers often don’t have. You can read more about the youth development study at its website: http:///research/yds. Without this panel study, we may not be aware of the positive impact that working can have on young r type of longitudinal survey is a cohort surveya type of longitudinal survey where a researcher’s interest is in a particular group of people who share some common experience or characteristic.. In a cohort survey, a researcher identifies some category of people that are of interest and then regularly surveys people who fall into that category. The same people don’t necessarily participate from year to year, but all participants must meet whatever categorical criteria fulfill the researcher’s primary interest. Common cohorts that may be of interest to researchers include people of particular generations or those who were born around the same time period, graduating classes, people who began work in a given industry at the same time, or perhaps people who have some specific life experience in common. An example of this sort of research can be seen in christine percheski’s work (2008)percheski, c. 42–47, 58, 85– three types of longitudinal surveys share the strength that they permit a researcher to make observations over time. This means that if whatever behavior or other phenomenon the researcher is interested in changes, either because of some world event or because people age, the researcher will be able to capture those changes. Types of longitudinal cher examines changes in trends over time; the same people do not necessarily participate in the survey more than cher surveys the exact same sample several times over a period of cher identifies some category of people that are of interest and then regularly surveys people who fall into that y, retrospective surveysa type of survey in which participants are asked to report events from the past. By having respondents report past behaviors, beliefs, or experiences, researchers are able to gather longitudinal-like data without actually incurring the time or expense of a longitudinal survey. Imagine, for example, that you’re asked in a survey to respond to questions about where, how, and with whom you spent last valentine’s day. As last valentine’s day can’t have been more than 12 months ago, chances are good that you might be able to respond accurately to any survey questions about it. But now let’s say the research wants to know how last valentine’s day compares to previous valentine’s days, so he asks you to report on where, how, and with whom you spent the preceding six valentine’s days.
Sum, when or with what frequency a survey is administered will determine whether your survey is cross-sectional or longitudinal. While longitudinal surveys are certainly preferable in terms of their ability to track changes over time, the time and cost required to administer a longitudinal survey can be prohibitive. As you may have guessed, the issues of time described here are not necessarily unique to survey research. Other methods of data collection can be cross-sectional or longitudinal—these are really matters of research design. But we’ve placed our discussion of these terms here because they are most commonly used by survey researchers to describe the type of survey administered. One common way to administer surveys is in the form of self-administered questionnairesa set of written questions that a research participant responds to by filling in answers on her or his own without the assistance of a researcher.. This means that a research participant is given a set of questions, in writing, to which he or she is asked to respond. Perhaps you’ve take a survey that was given to you in person; on many college campuses it is not uncommon for researchers to administer surveys in large social science classes (as you might recall from the discussion in our chapter on sampling). In my own introduction to sociology courses, i’ve welcomed graduate students and professors doing research in areas that are relevant to my students, such as studies of campus life, to administer their surveys to the class. If you are ever asked to complete a survey in a similar setting, it might be interesting to note how your perspective on the survey and its questions could be shaped by the new knowledge you’re gaining about survey research in this chers may also deliver surveys in person by going door-to-door and either asking people to fill them out right away or making arrangements for the researcher to return to pick up completed surveys. Though the advent of online survey tools has made door-to-door delivery of surveys less common, i still see an occasional survey researcher at my door, especially around election time. This mode of gathering data is apparently still used by political campaign workers, at least in some areas of the you are not able to visit each member of your sample personally to deliver a survey, you might consider sending your survey through the mail. While this mode of delivery may not be ideal (imagine how much less likely you’d probably be to return a survey that didn’t come with the researcher standing on your doorstep waiting to take it from you), sometimes it is the only available or the most practical option. As i’ve said, this may not be the most ideal way of administering a survey because it can be difficult to convince people to take the time to complete and return your survey researchers who deliver their surveys via snail mail may provide some advance notice to respondents about the survey to get people thinking about and preparing to complete it. They may also follow up with their sample a few weeks after their survey has been sent out. This can be done not only to remind those who have not yet completed the survey to please do so but also to thank those who have already returned the survey. Most survey researchers agree that this sort of follow-up is essential for improving mailed surveys’ return rates (babbie, 2010). Belmont, ca: my own study of older workers’ harassment experiences, people in the sample were notified in advance of the survey mailing via an article describing the research in a newsletter they received from the agency with whom i had partnered to conduct the survey. When i mailed the survey, a $1 bill was included with each in order to provide some incentive and an advance token of thanks to participants for returning the surveys. Two months after the initial mailing went out, those who were sent a survey were contacted by phone.
While returned surveys did not contain any identifying information about respondents, my research assistants contacted individuals to whom a survey had been mailed to remind them that it was not too late to return their survey and to say thank to those who may have already done so. Four months after the initial mailing went out, everyone on the original mailing list received a letter thanking those who had returned the survey and once again reminding those who had not that it was not too late to do so. The letter included a return postcard for respondents to complete should they wish to receive another copy of the survey. Respondents were also provided a telephone number to call and were provided the option of completing the survey by phone. As you can see, administering a survey by mail typically involves much more than simply arranging a single mailing; participants may be notified in advance of the mailing, they then receive the mailing, and then several follow-up contacts will likely be made after the survey has been mes surveys are administered by having a researcher actually pose questions directly to respondents rather than having respondents read the questions on their own. We discuss interviews in chapter 9 "interviews: qualitative and quantitative approaches", where we’ll examine interviews of the survey (or quantitative) type and qualitative interviews as well. Interview methodology differs from survey research in that data are collected via a personal interaction. Because asking people questions in person comes with a set of guidelines and concerns that differ from those associated with asking questions on paper or online, we’ll reserve our discussion of those guidelines and concerns for chapter 9 "interviews: qualitative and quantitative approaches". While online surveys may be faster and cheaper than mailed surveys, can you be certain that every person in your sample will have the necessary computer hardware, software, and internet access in order to complete your online survey? On the other hand, perhaps mailed surveys are more likely to reach your entire sample but also more likely to be lost and not returned. The choice of which delivery mechanism is best depends on a number of factors including your resources, the resources of your study participants, and the time you have available to distribute surveys and wait for responses. In my own survey of older workers, i would have much preferred to administer my survey online, but because so few people in my sample were likely to have computers, and even fewer would have internet access, i chose instead to mail paper copies of the survey to respondents’ homes. Understanding the characteristics of your study’s population is key to identifying the appropriate mechanism for delivering your is a factor in determining what type of survey researcher administers; cross-sectional surveys are administered at one time, and longitudinal surveys are administered over pective surveys offer some of the benefits of longitudinal research but also come with their own -administered questionnaires may be delivered in hard copy form to participants in person or via snail mail or the idea of a panel study piqued your interest, check out the up series of documentary films. 4 designing effective questions and fy the steps one should take in order to write effective survey be some of the ways that survey questions might confuse respondents and how to overcome that the two response option guidelines when writing closed-ended fence-sitting and be the steps involved in constructing a well-designed s why pretesting is this point we’ve considered several general points about surveys including when to use them, some of their pros and cons, and how often and in what ways to administer surveys. In this section we’ll get more specific and take a look at how to pose understandable questions that will yield useable data and how to present those questions on your effective first thing you need to do in order to write effective survey questions is identify what exactly it is that you wish to know. As silly as it sounds to state what seems so completely obvious, i can’t stress enough how easy it is to forget to include important questions when designing a survey. To understand which factors shaped successful students’ transitions to college, you’ll need to include questions in your survey about all the possible factors that could contribute. Perhaps time or space limitations won’t allow you to include every single item you’ve come up with, so you’ll also need to think about ranking your questions so that you can be sure to include those that you view as most gh i have stressed the importance of including questions on all topics you view as important to your overall research question, you don’t want to take an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach by uncritically including every possible question that occurs to you. This is not the time to show off your creative writing skills; a survey is a technical instrument and should be written in a way that is as direct and succinct as possible. As i’ve said, your survey respondents have agreed to give their time and attention to your survey.
In our example of the transition to college, heeding the criterion of relevance would mean that respondents must understand what exactly you mean by “transition to college” if you are going to use that phrase in your survey and that respondents must have actually experienced the transition to college you decide that you do wish to pose some questions about matters with which only a portion of respondents will have had experience, it may be appropriate to introduce a filter questiona question designed to identify some subset of survey respondents who are then asked additional questions that are not relevant to the entire sample. A filter question is designed to identify some subset of survey respondents who are asked additional questions that are not relevant to the entire sample. Perhaps in your survey on the transition to college you want to know whether substance use plays any role in students’ transitions. Filter are some ways of asking questions that are bound to confuse a good many survey respondents. In general, avoiding negative terms in your question wording will help to increase respondent this is generally true, some researchers argue that negatively worded questions should be integrated with positively worded questions in order to ensure that respondents have actually carefully read each question. While wicked may not be a term you’re likely to use in a survey, the point is to be thoughtful and cautious about whatever terminology you do multiple questions as though they are a single question can also be terribly confusing for survey respondents. Because the question combines “demanding” and “interesting,” there is no way to respond yes to one criterion but no to the r thing to avoid when constructing survey questions is the problem of social desirabilitythe idea that respondents will try to answer questions in a way that will present them in a favorable light.. In survey research, social desirability refers to the idea that respondents will try to answer questions in a way that will present them in a favorable light. So it may be difficult to get people to admit to cheating on a survey. Offers a useful suggestion for helping you do this—simply imagine how you would feel responding to your survey questions. If you would be uncomfortable, chances are others would as y, it is important to get feedback on your survey questions from as many people as possible, especially people who are like those in your sample. Ask your friends for help, ask your mentors for feedback, ask your family to take a look at your survey as well. The more feedback you can get on your survey questions, the better the chances that you will come up with a set of questions that are understandable to a wide variety of people and, most importantly, to those in your sum, in order to pose effective survey questions, researchers should do the following:Identify what it is they wish to questions clear and questions relevant to filter questions when questions that are likely to confuse respondents such as those that use double negatives, use culturally specific terms, or pose more than one question in the form of a single e how they would feel responding to feedback, especially from people who resemble those in the researcher’s posing clear and understandable questions in your survey is certainly important, so, too, is providing respondents with unambiguous response optionsthe answers that are provided to for each question in a survey.. One caution to keep in mind when accepting multiple responses to a single question, however, is that doing so may add complexity when it comes to tallying and analyzing your survey ng response options assumes that your questions will be closed-ended questionsa survey question for which the researcher provides respondents with a limited set of clear response options.. In a quantitative written survey, which is the type of survey we’ve been discussing here, chances are good that most if not all your questions will be closed ended. This means that you, the researcher, will provide respondents with a limited set of options for their responses. Sometimes survey researchers include open-ended questionsa survey question for which the researcher does not provide respondents with response options; instead, respondents answer in their own words. These questions are generally used to find out more about a survey participant’s experiences or feelings about whatever they are being asked to report in the survey. If, for example, a survey includes closed-ended questions asking respondents to report on their involvement in extracurricular activities during college, an open-ended question could ask respondents why they participated in those activities or what they gained from their participation. While responses to such questions may also be captured using a closed-ended format, allowing participants to share some of their responses in their own words can make the experience of completing the survey more satisfying to respondents and can also reveal new motivations or explanations that had not occurred to the section 8.
Sometimes researchers actually want to learn something about people who claim to have no opinion. Other times researchers feel confident their respondents will all be familiar with every topic in their survey. Not only will this save you some space in your survey but it will also help respondents progress through your survey more easily. Survey questions utilizing matrix ing addition to constructing quality questions and posing clear response options, you’ll also need to think about how to present your written questions and response options to survey respondents. Questions are presented on a questionnairethe document (either hard copy or online) that contains survey questions on which respondents read and mark their responses. The document (either hard copy or online) that contains all your survey questions that respondents read and mark their responses on. Designing questionnaires takes some thought, and in this section we’ll discuss the sorts of things you should think about as you prepare to present your well-constructed survey questions on a of the first things to do once you’ve come up with a set of survey questions you feel confident about is to group those questions thematically. Most survey researchers agree that it is best to begin a survey with questions that will want to make respondents continue (babbie, 2010; dillman, 2000; neuman, 2003). There’s some disagreement over where on a survey to place demographic questions such as those about a person’s age, gender, and race. On the one hand, placing them at the beginning of the questionnaire may lead respondents to think the survey is boring, unimportant, and not something they want to bother completing. On the other hand, if your survey deals with some very sensitive or difficult topic, such as child sexual abuse or other criminal activity, you don’t want to scare respondents away or shock them by beginning with your most intrusive truth, the order in which you present questions on a survey is best determined by the unique characteristics of your research—only you, the researcher, hopefully in consultation with people who are willing to provide you with feedback, can determine how best to order your questions. Keeping in mind the characteristics and needs of the people you will ask to complete your survey should help guide you as you determine the most appropriate order in which to present your ’ll also need to consider the time it will take respondents to complete your questionnaire. Surveys vary in length, from just a page or two to a dozen or more pages, which means they also vary in the time it takes to complete them. Keep in mind that even if your research question requires a good number of questions be included in your questionnaire, do your best to keep the questionnaire as brief as possible. Any hint that you’ve thrown in a bunch of useless questions just for the sake of throwing them in will turn off respondents and may make them not want to complete your survey. Ask them to complete the survey as though they were actually members of your sample. This will give you a good idea about what sort of time estimate to provide respondents when it comes time to actually administer your survey, and about whether you have some wiggle room to add additional items or need to cut a few s this goes without saying, but your questionnaire should also be attractive. Try to mimic those features in the presentation of your survey torming and consulting the literature are two important early steps to take when preparing to write effective survey sure that your survey questions will be relevant to all respondents and that you use filter questions when g feedback on your survey questions is a crucial step in the process of designing a it comes to creating response options, the solution to the problem of fence-sitting might cause floating, whereas the solution to the problem of floating might cause fence ting is an important step for improving one’s survey before actually administering a little internet research to find out what a likert scale is and when you may use a closed-ended question that follows the guidelines for good survey question construction. 5 analysis of survey response rate, and discuss some of the current thinking about response be what a codebook is and what purpose it univariate, bivariate, and multivariate be each of the measures of central be what a contingency table text is primarily focused on designing research, collecting data, and becoming a knowledgeable and responsible consumer of research. In fact, if you’ve ever taken a statistics class, you already know much about how to analyze quantitative survey data.
Here we’ll go over a few basics that can get you started as you begin to think about turning all those completed questionnaires into findings that you can completed questionnaires to analyzable can be very exciting to receive those first few completed surveys back from respondents. Here we’ll describe just how that process works for survey mentioned, the hope is that you will receive a good portion of the questionnaires you distributed back in a completed and readable format. Though response rates vary, and researchers don’t always agree about what makes a good response rate, having three-quarters of your surveys returned would be considered good, even excellent, by most survey researchers. There has been lots of research done on how to improve a survey’s response rate. We covered some of these previously, but suggestions include personalizing questionnaires by, for example, addressing them to specific respondents rather than to some generic recipient such as “madam” or “sir”; enhancing the questionnaire’s credibility by providing details about the study, contact information for the researcher, and perhaps partnering with agencies likely to be respected by respondents such as universities, hospitals, or other relevant organizations; sending out prequestionnaire notices and postquestionnaire reminders; and including some token of appreciation with mailed questionnaires even if small, such as a $1 er your survey’s response rate, the major concern of survey researchers once they have their nice, big stack of completed questionnaires is condensing their data into manageable, and analyzable, bits. One major advantage of quantitative methods such as survey research, as you may recall from chapter 1 "introduction", is that they enable researchers to describe large amounts of data because they can be represented by and condensed into numbers. In order to condense your completed surveys into analyzable numbers, you’ll first need to create a codebooka document that outlines how a survey researcher has translated her or his data from words into numbers.. A codebook is a document that outlines how a survey researcher has translated her or his data from words into numbers. An excerpt from the codebook i developed from my survey of older workers can be seen in table 8. The coded responses you see can be seen in their original survey format in chapter 6 "defining and measuring concepts", figure 6. Codebook excerpt from survey of older general, how financially secure would you say you are? If you’ve utilized an online tool such as surveymonkey to administer your survey, here’s some good news—most online survey tools come with the capability of importing survey results directly into a data analysis program. A frequency distribution is a way of summarizing the distribution of responses on a single survey question. Let’s look at the frequency distribution for just one variable from my older worker survey. We also learn from this single frequency distribution that fewer than 10% of respondents reported being in one of the two most secure r form of univariate analysis that survey researchers can conduct on single variables is measures of central tendency. Distribution of responses and median value on workers’ financial you can see, we can learn a lot about our respondents simply by conducting univariate analysis of measures on our survey. To learn whether a relationship exists between two variables, a researcher may cross-tabulatethe process for creating a contingency table. Financial security among men and women workers age 62 and up", i have cross-tabulated two questions from my older worker survey: respondents’ reported gender and their self-rated financial 8. Researchers sometimes collapse response categories on items such as this in order to make it easier to read results in a table. We won’t go into detail here about how to conduct multivariate analysis of quantitative survey items here, but we will return to multivariate analysis in chapter 14 "reading and understanding social research", where we’ll discuss strategies for reading and understanding tables that present multivariate statistics.
If you are interested in learning more about the analysis of quantitative survey data, i recommend checking out your campus’s offerings in statistics classes. The quantitative data analysis skills you will gain in a statistics class could serve you quite well should you find yourself seeking employment one survey researchers should always aim to obtain the highest response rate possible, some recent research argues that high return rates on surveys may be less important than we once are several computer programs designed to assist survey researchers with analyzing their data include spss, microcase, and analysis is about identifying, describing, and explaining gency tables show how, or whether, one variable covaries with gss allows researchers to cross-tabulate gss variables directly from its website. Pmcid: pmc4601897understanding and evaluating survey researchjulie ponto, phd, aprn, agcns-bc, aocns®winona state university, rochester, minnesotacorrespondence to: julie ponto, phd, aprn, agcns-bc, aocns®, winona state university, graduate programs in nursing, 859 30th avenue south east, rochester, mn 55904. Selection of a research approach depends on a number of factors, including the purpose of the research, the type of research questions to be answered, and the availability of resources. The purpose of this article is to describe survey research as one approach to the conduct of research so that the reader can critically evaluate the appropriateness of the conclusions from studies employing survey researchsurvey research is defined as "the collection of information from a sample of individuals through their responses to questions" (check & schutt, 2012, p. This type of research allows for a variety of methods to recruit participants, collect data, and utilize various methods of instrumentation. As it is often used to describe and explore human behavior, surveys are therefore frequently used in social and psychological research (singleton & straits, 2009). Has been obtained from individuals and groups through the use of survey research for decades. Common examples of less rigorous surveys include marketing or political surveys of consumer patterns and public opinion research has historically included large population-based data collection. The primary purpose of this type of survey research was to obtain information describing characteristics of a large sample of individuals of interest relatively quickly. Large census surveys obtaining information reflecting demographic and personal characteristics and consumer feedback surveys are prime examples. These surveys were often provided through the mail and were intended to describe demographic characteristics of individuals or obtain opinions on which to base programs or products for a population or recently, survey research has developed into a rigorous approach to research, with scientifically tested strategies detailing who to include (representative sample), what and how to distribute (survey method), and when to initiate the survey and follow up with nonresponders (reducing nonresponse error), in order to ensure a high-quality research process and outcome. Currently, the term "survey" can reflect a range of research aims, sampling and recruitment strategies, data collection instruments, and methods of survey this range of options in the conduct of survey research, it is imperative for the consumer/reader of survey research to understand the potential for bias in survey research as well as the tested techniques for reducing bias, in order to draw appropriate conclusions about the information reported in this manner. Common types of error in research, along with the sources of error and strategies for reducing error as described throughout this article, are summarized in the s of error in survey research and strategies to reduce ngthe goal of sampling strategies in survey research is to obtain a sufficient sample that is representative of the population of interest. For example, if a survey researcher intends to obtain a sample of individuals with breast cancer representative of all individuals with breast cancer in the united states, the researcher would want to use recruitment strategies that would recruit both women and men, individuals from rural and urban settings, individuals receiving and not receiving active treatment, and so on. Because of the difficulty in obtaining samples representative of a large population, researchers may focus the population of interest to a subset of individuals (e. Large census surveys require extremely large samples to adequately represent the characteristics of the population because they are intended to represent the entire collection methodssurvey research may use a variety of data collection methods with the most common being questionnaires and interviews. Questionnaires may be self-administered or administered by a professional, may be administered individually or in a group, and typically include a series of items reflecting the research aims. Questionnaires may include demographic questions in addition to valid and reliable research instruments (costanzo, stawski, ryff, coe, & almeida, 2012; dubenske et al. It is helpful to the reader when authors describe the contents of the survey questionnaire so that the reader can interpret and evaluate the potential for errors of validity (e.
Helpful examples of articles that describe the survey instruments exist in the literature (buerhaus et al. May be in paper form and mailed to participants, delivered in an electronic format via email or an internet-based program such as surveymonkey, or a combination of both, giving the participant the option to choose which method is preferred (ponto et al. Using a combination of methods of survey administration can help to ensure better sample coverage (i. For example, if a researcher were to only use an internet-delivered questionnaire, individuals without access to a computer would be excluded from participation. Improving the visual appeal and graphics of surveys by using a font size appropriate for the respondents, ordering items logically without creating unintended response bias, and arranging items clearly on each page can increase the response rate to electronic questionnaires. Lack of validity or reliability) and help ensure a better response ting interviews is another approach to data collection used in survey research. Interviews can be costly and time intensive, and therefore are relatively impractical for large authors advocate for using mixed methods for survey research when no one method is adequate to address the planned research aims, to reduce the potential for measurement and non-response error, and to better tailor the study methods to the intended sample (dillman et al. For example, a mixed methods survey research approach may begin with distributing a questionnaire and following up with telephone interviews to clarify unclear survey responses (singleton & straits, 2009). Mixed methods might also be used when visual or auditory deficits preclude an individual from completing a questionnaire or participating in an ri et al. 2014) described the use of survey research in a study of the effect of communication skills training for oncologists on oncologist and patient outcomes (e. 2014) chose a quantitative approach to collect data from oncologist and patient participants regarding the study outcome variables. 2014) tailored design for survey research follow-up may have reduced nonresponse sionssurvey research is a useful and legitimate approach to research that has clear benefits in helping to describe and explore variables and constructs of interest. Survey research, like all research, has the potential for a variety of sources of error, but several strategies exist to reduce the potential for error. Advanced practitioners aware of the potential sources of error and strategies to improve survey research can better determine how and whether the conclusions from a survey research study apply to author has no potential conflicts of interest to nces1. Articles from journal of the advanced practitioner in oncology are provided here courtesy of harborside s:article | pubreader | epub (beta) | pdf (105k) | now ng which quantitative survey method is right for quantitative survey method has unique advantages and disadvantages that may make one more suitable than another given a certain situation. Use our rating system to determine the best method for your next quantitative data collection method has unique advantages and disadvantages that may make one more suitable than another given a certain ’s important to look at your specific project and determine which quantitative survey method provides an appropriate balance of your research objectives, available budget, timing requirements, reliability of the data, etc. For example, while the email method may be economical, if you only have e-mail addresses for 50% of your sample, it will not provide you with complete or reliable chart below lists considerations when weighing the pros and cons of some common quantitative data collection methods. For these ratings, online and mixed mode online data collection methods involve sending sample members invitation emails that include a link to the method is rated as follows for its ability to meet the listed study requirements:Chapter 3 -- survey research design and quantitative methods of analysis for cross-sectional : chapter 3last modified 15 august ne has had experience with surveys. Use surveys to assess the extent to which programs achieve their a method of collecting information by asking questions. The field ation is a widely-respected survey research firm and is used the media, politicians, and academic be no better than the quality of the sample, it is essential to basic principles of sampling.
This often means that we back several times, but this is the price we must pay for a good in this module is a telephone survey. First, they avoid the dangers survey researchers call "systematic selection biases" which are nonprobability samples. We can never eliminate sampling error entirely,And it is unrealistic to expect that we could ever eliminate nonsampling is good research practice to be diligent in seeking out sources of and trying to minimize les one at a time (univariate analysis). Then the hypothesis that they are related ( alternative or research hypothesis) will be more credible. Important when choosing an appropriate measure of have described how surveys are done and how we analyze the n two variables.