SOCIAL
SURVEY
Arpita Christian
WHY ARE SURVEYS
POPULAR ?
Reasons for Collecting Primary Data by Survey Research
1. The need to know why
To understand why people do or do not do something?
2. The need to know how
To understand the process consumers go through before
taking action
3. The need to know who
To know who the person is from a demographic or lifestyle
perspective
SOCIAL SURVEY
Social Survey is generally understood as
the use of a questionnaire to gather facts,
opinions, and attitudes. It is the most
popular way to gather primary data.
Survey research can be classified as field
studies with a quantitative orientation.
• Survey research is a very old, and a very
popular, research technique
• 1880 survey by Karl Marx in France
– 25000 questionnaires sent to workers
• Late 19th century “Chocolate Sociologists”
– Rowntree and Cadbury
– Community surveys to study poverty
Survey Research
• Only rarely, however, do survey researchers
study whole populations; they study samples
drawn from populations. From these samples they
infer the characteristics of the defined population
or universe.
• Sample surveys attempt to determine the
incidence, distribution, and interrelations among
sociological and psychological variables, and in
so doing, usually focus on people, the vital facts
of people, and their beliefs, opinions, and
attitudes.
Survey Research
• The social scientific nature of survey research is
revealed by the nature of its variables, which can
be classified as sociological facts, opinions, and
attitudes.
• Sociological facts are attributes of individuals
that spring from their membership in social
groups: sex, income, political and religious
affiliation, socioeconomic status, education, age,
living expenses, occupation, race, and so on.
Survey Research
• The second type of variable is psychological and
includes opinions and attitudes on the one hand,
and behavior on the other.
• Survey researchers are interested not only in
relations among sociological variables; they are
more likely to be interested in what people think
and do, and the relations between sociological
and psychological variables.
Types of Surveys
• Surveys can be conveniently classified by the
following methods of obtaining information:
personal interview, mail questionnaire, panel,
and telephone. Of course, the personal
interview far overshadows the others as
perhaps the most powerful and useful tool of
social scientific survey research.
3 MAJOR CHARACTERISTICS
• There are three major characteristics that
most surveys possess:
1)
2)
3)
Information is collected from a group of people in
order to describe some aspect of the population
Information is collected by asking questions of the
members of the selected group
Information is collected from a sample rather than
from every member of the population
Steps in Survey Research
1. State the objectives of the survey
2. Define the target population
3. Define the data to be collected
4. Define the required precision and accuracy
5. Define the measurement `instrument'
6. Define the sample frame, sample size and sampling
method
7. Select the sample
8. Collect the data
9. Data analysis
10. Results
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Steps in Survey Research
1. State the objectives of the survey.
You have to define specifically the problem you are
trying to solve.
If you cannot state the objectives of the survey you
are unlikely to generate useable results. You have to
be able to formulate something quite detailed,
perhaps organized around a clear statement of a
testable hypothesis. Clarifying the aims of the
survey is critical to its ultimate success.
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Steps in Survey Research
2. Define the target population.
Defining the target population can be relatively simple,
especially for finite populations, however, it may be more
difficult to define what constitutes 'natural' membership
of the population; In that case, arbitrary decisions have
to be made.
The process of defining the population is quite different
when dealing with continuous (rather than discrete)
phenomena. As you will see, it is still possible to define a
sample size even if you don't know the proportion of the
population that the sample represents.
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Steps in Survey Research
3. Define the data to be collected.
What new information do you need to solve the
problem?
Hint: prepare hypothetical tables of results. They help us
to separate “need to know” than “nice to know”.
Focus groups can help to find out which questions to ask
in a survey. But they can not substitute surveys.
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Steps in Survey Research
4. Define the required precision and accuracy
The most subjective stage is defining the precision with which
the data should be collected. Strictly speaking, the precision
can only be correctly estimated if we conduct a census. The
precision provided by a sample survey is an estimate the
'tightness' of the range of estimates of the population
characteristics provided by various samples.
When we estimate a population value from a sample we can
only work out how accurate the sample estimate is if we
actually know the correct value - which we rarely do - but we
can estimate the 'likely' accuracy. We need to design and select
the sample in such a way that we obtain results that have
acceptable precision and accuracy
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Steps in Survey Research
5. Define the measurement `instrument‘.
The measurement instrument is the method interview, observation, questionnaire - by which the
survey data is generated.
To produce useful information the ideas that
motivated the survey must be translated into good
questions.
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Steps in Survey Research
6. Define the sample frame, sample size and
sampling method.
The sample frame is the list of people ('objects'
for inanimate populations) that make up the
target population; It is a list of the individuals
who meet the 'requirements' to be a member
of that population.
The sample is selected from the sample frame
by specifying the sample size (either as a
finite number, or as a proportion of the
population).
The sampling method is the process by which
we choose the members of the sample.
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Steps in Survey Research
7. Select the sample.
• The sample is selected, using the sample method
defined, from the sample frame by specifying the
sample size.
• The process of generating a sample requires several
critical decisions to be made. Mistakes at this stage will
compromise - and possibly invalidate - the entire survey.
These decisions are concerned with the sample frame,
the sample size, and the sampling method.
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Types of Errors.
• Coverage error occurs when the list (or frame) from
which a sample is drawn does not include all elements of
the population that researchers wish to study.
• Sampling error occurs when researchers survey only a
subset or sample of all people in the population instead
of conducting a census.
• Measurement error occurs when a respondent’s
answer to a giving question is inaccurate, imprecise, or
can not be compared in any useful way to other
respondent’s answers.
• Non response error occurs when a significant number
of people in the survey sample do not respond to the
questionnaire and are different from those who do in a
way that is important to the study.
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Steps in Survey Research
8. Collect the data.
Apply the instrument to collect the information.
There are different models to collect the data.
• Telephone survey
• Direct administration to a group
• Personal interview
• Mail
• Internet survey and e-mail
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Steps in Survey Research
9. Data analysis
• Clean the questionnaires.
• Code the questionnaires.
–
–
–
–
Close-ended questions.
Open-ended questions.
Partially close-ended questions.
Missing data.
• Decide which statistics are most useful to you.
• Interpretation. Look for results that matter.
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Steps in Survey Research
10. Results
• Abstract or executive summary.
• Problem statement.
• Methods and procedures.
• Error structure.
• Findings.
• Implications.
• Appendices.
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Interviews and Schedules
• The term “schedule” will be used. It has a clear
meaning: the instrument used to gather survey
information through personal interview.
“Questionnaire” has been used to label personal
interview instruments and attitudinal or
personality instruments. The latter are called
“scales”.
• Schedule information includes factual
information, opinions and attitudes, and reasons
for behavior, opinions, and attitudes.
Interviews and Schedules
• The factual information gathered in surveys
includes the so-called sociological data
mentioned previously: gender, marital status,
education, income, political preference,
religious preference, and the like. Such
information is indispensable, since it is used in
studying the relations among variables and in
checking the adequacy of samples.
Interviews and Schedules
• Other kinds of factual information include
what respondents know about the subject
under investigation, what respondents did in
the past, are doing now, and intend to do in the
future. In this special sense, past, present, and
future behavior can all be classified under the
“fact” of behavior, even if the behavior is only
an intention.
Other Types of Survey Research
• The next important type of survey research is
the panel. A sample of respondents is selected
and interviewed, and then reinterviewed and
studied at a later time. The panel technique
enables the researcher to study changes in
behaviors and attitudes.
Other Types of Survey Research
• Telephone surveys have little to recommend
them beyond speed and low cost. This is
especially true when the interviewer is
unknown to the respondent. The interviewer
then is limited by possible nonresponse,
uncooperativeness, and by reluctance to
answer more than simple, superficial
questions.
Other Types of Survey Research
• The mail questionnaire has serious drawbacks
unless it is used in conjunction with other
techniques. Two of these defects are possible
lack of response and the inability to verify the
responses given.
• Returns of less than 40% are common. Higher
percentages are rare. At best, the researcher
must be content with returns as low as 50% or
60%.
Other Types of Survey Research
• Because mail questionnaires produce low
returns, valid generalizations cannot be made.
Although there are means of securing larger
returns and reducing deficiencies—follow-up
questionnaires, enclosing money, interviewing
a random sample of nonrespondents, and
analyzing nonrespondent data—these methods
are costly, time-consuming, and often
ineffectual.
Other Types of Survey Research
• When compared with mail surveys, telephone
surveys have the advantage of a higher return
rate. However, they are limited to who one can
obtain by phone and the brevity of the
interview.
The Methodology of Survey Research
• Survey researchers uses a flow plan or chart to outline
the design and subsequent implementation of a survey.
The flow plan starts with the objectives of the survey,
lists each step to taken, and ends with the final report.
• First, the general and specific problems that are to be
solved are as carefully and as completely stated as
possible.
The Methodology of Survey Research
• The next plan in the flow plan is the sample and the
sampling plan. Area sampling is the type most used in
survey research. We must first define large areas to be
sampled at random. This amounts to partitioning of the
universe and random sampling of the cells of the
partition. The partition cells may be areas delineated by
grids on maps or aerial photographs of counties, school
districts, or city blocks. Then further subarea samples
may be drawn at random from the large areas already
drawn. Finally, all individuals or families or random
samples of individuals and families may be drawn.
The Methodology of Survey Research
• The next large step in a survey is the
construction of the interview schedule and
other measuring instruments to be used. The
main task is to translate the research question
into an interview instrument and into any other
instruments constructed for the survey. After
drafts of the interview schedule and other
instruments are completed, they are pretested
on a small representative sample of the
universe. They are then revised and put in final
form.
The Methodology of Survey Research
• The steps outlined above constitute the first
large part of any survey. After the researcher
has developed the survey instrument and
determined which population to be measured,
the researcher also needs to be decide whether
the data will be collected using a crosssectional design or longitudinal design.
The Methodology of Survey Research
• Data collection is the second large part of
survey research. Interviewers are oriented,
trained, and sent out with complete
instructions as to whom to interview and how
the interview is to be handled. In the best
surveys, interviews are allowed no latitude as
to whom to interview. They must interview
those individuals and only those individuals
designed, generally by random devices.
The Methodology of Survey Research
• The third large part of the flow plan is
analytical.
• Coding is the term used to describe the
translation of question responses and
respondent information to specific categories
for purposes of analysis.
• Content analysis is an objective and
quantitative method for assigning types of
verbal and other data to categories.
Checking Survey Data
• Some of the respondents can be interviewed
again, and the results of both interviews
checked against each other. It has been found
that the reliability of personal factual items, like
age and income, is high. The reliability of
attitude response is harder to determine because
a changed response can mean a changed
attitude.
• One way of checking the validity of a
measuring instrument is to use an outside
criterion.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Survey
Research
Strengths
Useful in describing large populations
Make large samples possible
Surveys are flexible
Standardized questions
Weaknesses
Seldom deal with context of social life
Inflexible
Artificial
Weak on validity (but strong on reliability)