Research Assignment #25: Survey Research& Exercise ‘For the Departments of English & Media Studies by Prof Dr Sohail Ansari

Survey Research

‘Survey research is one of the most important areas of measurement in applied social research. The broad area of survey research encompasses any measurement procedures that involve asking questions of respondents. A "survey" can be anything form a short paper-and-pencil feedback form to an intensive one-on-one in-depth interview.

Types of Surveys

‘Surveys can be divided into two broad categories: the questionnaire and the interview. Questionnaires are usually paper-and-pencil instruments that the respondent completes. Interviews are completed by the interviewer based on the respondent says. Sometimes, it's hard to tell the difference between a questionnaire and an interview. For instance, some people think that questionnaires always ask short closed-ended questions while interviews always ask broad open-ended ones. But you will see questionnaires with open-ended questions (although they do tend to be shorter than in interviews) and there will often be a series of closed-ended questions asked in an interview’.

Exercise:

Write down open-ended questions for a questionnaire and then make them longer for an interviews

 

Selecting the Survey Method

Selecting the type of survey you are going to use is one of the most critical decisions in many social research contexts. You'll see that there are very few simple rules that will make the decision for you -- you have to use your judgment to balance the advantages and disadvantages of different survey types. Here, all I want to do is give you a number of questions you might ask that can help guide your decision.

Population Issues

The first set of considerations have to do with the population and its accessibility.

• Can the population be enumerated?

For some populations, you have a complete listing of the units that will be sampled. For others, such a list is difficult or impossible to compile. For instance, there are complete listings of registered voters or person with active drivers licenses. But no one keeps a complete list of homeless people. If you are doing a study that requires input from homeless persons, you are very likely going to need to go and find the respondents personally. In such contexts, you can pretty much rule out the idea of mail surveys or telephone interviews.

Is the population literate?

Questionnaires require that your respondents can read. While this might seem initially like a reasonable assumption for many adult populations, we know from recent research that the instance of adult illiteracy is alarmingly high. And, even if your respondents can read to some degree, your questionnaire may contain difficult or technical vocabulary. Clearly, there are some populations that you would expect to be illiterate. Young children would not be good targets for questionnaires.

Exercise:

Write down questions for educated people and then change same questions for illiterate?

Are there language issues?

We live in a multilingual world. Virtually every society has members who speak other than the predominant language. Some countries (like Canada) are officially multilingual. And, our increasingly global economy requires us to do research that spans countries and language groups. Can you produce multiple versions of your questionnaire? For mail instruments, can you know in advance the language your respondent speaks, or do you send multiple translations of your instrument? Can you be confident that important connotations in your instrument are not culturally specific? Could some of the important nuances get lost in the process of translating your questions?

Will the population cooperate?

People who do research on immigration issues have a difficult methodological problem. They often need to speak with undocumented immigrants or people who may be able to identify others who are. Why would we expect those respondents to cooperate? Although the researcher may mean no harm, the respondents are at considerable risk legally if information they divulge should get into the hand of the authorities. The same can be said for any target group that is engaging in illegal or unpopular activities.

Exercise:

Do you think people you target will speak against a king? If not so what you will do?

What are the geographic restrictions?

Is your population of interest dispersed over too broad a geographic range for you to study feasibly with a personal interview? It may be possible for you to send a mail instrument to a nationwide sample. You may be able to conduct phone interviews with them. But it will almost certainly be less feasible to do research that requires interviewers to visit directly with respondents if they are widely dispersed.

Sampling Issues

The sample is the actual group you will have to contact in some way. There are several important sampling issues you need to consider when doing survey research.

What data is available?

What information do you have about your sample? Do you know their current addresses? Their current phone numbers? Are your contact lists up to date?

Can respondents be found?

Can your respondents be located? Some people are very busy. Some travel a lot. Some work the night shift. Even if you have an accurate phone or address, you may not be able to locate or make contact with your sample.

Who is the respondent?

Who is the respondent in your study? Let's say you draw a sample of households in a small city. A household is not a respondent. Do you want to interview a specific individual? Do you want to talk only to the "head of household" (and how is that person defined)? Are you willing to talk to any member of the household? Do you state that you will speak to the first adult member of the household who opens the door? What if that person is unwilling to be interviewed but someone else in the house is willing? How do you deal with multi-family households? Similar problems arise when you sample groups, agencies, or companies. Can you survey any member of the organization? Or, do you only want to speak to the Director of Human Resources? What if the person you would like to interview is unwilling or unable to participate? Do you use another member of the organization?

Can all members of population be sampled?

If you have an incomplete list of the population (i.e., sampling frame) you may not be able to sample every member of the population. Lists of various groups are extremely hard to keep up to date. People move or change their names. Even though they are on your sampling frame listing, you may not be able to get to them. And, it's possible they are not even on the list.

Are response rates likely to be a problem?

Even if you are able to solve all of the other population and sampling problems, you still have to deal with the issue of response rates. Some members of your sample will simply refuse to respond. Others have the best of intentions, but can't seem to find the time to send in your questionnaire by the due date. Still others misplace the instrument or forget about the appointment for an interview. Low response rates are among the most difficult of problems in survey research. They can ruin an otherwise well-designed survey effort.

Question Issues

Sometimes the nature of what you want to ask respondents will determine the type of survey you select.

What types of questions can be asked?

Are you going to be asking personal questions? Are you going to need to get lots of detail in the responses? Can you anticipate the most frequent or important types of responses and develop reasonable closed-ended questions?

How complex will the questions be?

Sometimes you are dealing with a complex subject or topic. The questions you want to ask are going to have multiple parts. You may need to branch to sub-questions.

Will screening questions be needed?

A screening question may be needed to determine whether the respondent is qualified to answer your question of interest. For instance, you wouldn't want to ask someone their opinions about a specific computer program without first "screening" them to find out whether they have any experience using the program. Sometimes you have to screen on several variables (e.g., age, gender, experience). The more complicated the screening, the less likely it is that you can rely on paper-and-pencil instruments without confusing the respondent.

Can question sequence be controlled?

Is your survey one where you can construct in advance a reasonable sequence of questions? Or, are you doing an initial exploratory study where you may need to ask lots of follow-up questions that you can't easily anticipate?

Will lengthy questions be asked?

If your subject matter is complicated, you may need to give the respondent some detailed background for a question. Can you reasonably expect your respondent to sit still long enough in a phone interview to ask your question?

Will long response scales be used?

If you are asking people about the different computer equipment they use, you may have to have a lengthy response list (CD-ROM drive, floppy drive, mouse, touch pad, modem, network connection, external speakers, etc.). Clearly, it may be difficult to ask about each of these in a short phone interview.

Content Issues

The content of your study can also pose challenges for the different survey types you might utilize.

Can the respondents be expected to know about the issue?

If the respondent does not keep up with the news (e.g., by reading the newspaper, watching television news, or talking with others), they may not even know about the news issue you want to ask them about. Or, if you want to do a study of family finances and you are talking to the spouse who doesn't pay the bills on a regular basis, they may not have the information to answer your questions.

Exercise:

Inhabitants of kingdom are most likely do not keep up with news; so what you will do?

Will respondent need to consult records?

Even if the respondent understands what you're asking about, you may need to allow them to consult their records in order to get an accurate answer. For instance, if you ask them how much money they spent on food in the past month, they may need to look up their personal check and credit card records. In this case, you don't want to be involved in an interview where they would have to go look things up while they keep you waiting (they wouldn't be comfortable with that).

Bias Issues

People come to the research endeavor with their own sets of biases and prejudices. Sometimes, these biases will be less of a problem with certain types of survey approaches.

Exercise:

Identify your own sets of biases and prejudices

Can social desirability be avoided?

Respondents generally want to "look good" in the eyes of others. None of us likes to look like we don't know an answer. We don't want to say anything that would be embarrassing. If you ask people about information that may put them in this kind of position, they may not tell you the truth, or they may "spin" the response so that it makes them look better. This may be more of a problem in an interview situation where they are face-to face or on the phone with a live interviewer.

Can interviewer distortion and subversion be controlled?

Interviewers may distort an interview as well. They may not ask questions that make them uncomfortable. They may not listen carefully to respondents on topics for which they have strong opinions. They may make the judgment that they already know what the respondent would say to a question based on their prior responses, even though that may not be true.

Can false respondents be avoided?

With mail surveys it may be difficult to know who actually responded. Did the head of household complete the survey or someone else? Did the CEO actually give the responses or instead pass the task off to a subordinate? Is the person you're speaking with on the phone actually who they say they are? At least with personal interviews, you have a reasonable chance of knowing who you are speaking with. In mail surveys or phone interviews, this may not be the case.

Administrative Issues

Last, but certainly not least, you have to consider the feasibility of the survey method for your study.

Costs

Cost is often the major determining factor in selecting survey type. You might prefer to do personal interviews, but can't justify the high cost of training and paying for the interviewers. You may prefer to send out an extensive mailing but can't afford the postage to do so.

Facilities

Do you have the facilities (or access to them) to process and manage your study? In phone interviews, do you have well-equipped phone surveying facilities? For focus groups, do you have a comfortable and accessible room to host the group? Do you have the equipment needed to record and transcribe responses?

Time

Some types of surveys take longer than others. Do you need responses immediately (as in an overnight public opinion poll)? Have you budgeted enough time for your study to send out mail surveys and follow-up reminders, and to get the responses back by mail? Have you allowed for enough time to get enough personal interviews to justify that approach?

Personnel

Different types of surveys make different demands of personnel. Interviews require interviewers who are motivated and well-trained. Group administered surveys require people who are trained in group facilitation. Some studies may be in a technical area that requires some degree of expertise in the interviewer.

Types Of Questions

Survey questions can be divided into two broad types: structured and unstructured. From an instrument design point of view, the structured questions pose the greater difficulties. From a content perspective, it may actually be more difficult to write good unstructured questions. Here, I'll discuss the variety of structured questions you can consider for your survey.

Dichotomous Questions

When a question has two possible responses, we consider it dichotomous. Surveys often use dichotomous questions that ask for a Yes/No, True/False or Agree/Disagree response. There are a variety of ways to lay these questions out on a questionnaire:

Questions Based on Level Of Measurement

We can also classify questions in terms of their level of measurement. For instance, we might measure occupation using a nominal question. Here, the number next to each response has no meaning except as a placeholder for that response. The choice of a "2" for a lawyer and a "1" for a truck driver is arbitrary -- from the numbering system used we can't infer that a lawyer is "twice" something that a truck driver is.

Filter or Contingency Questions

Sometimes you have to ask the respondent one question in order to determine if they are qualified or experienced enough to answer a subsequent one. This requires using a filter or contingency question. For instance, you may want to ask one question if the respondent has ever smoked marijuana and a different question if they have not. in this case, you would have to construct a filter question to determine whether they've ever smoked marijuana:

Filter questions can get very complex. Sometimes, you have to have multiple filter questions in order to direct your respondents to the correct subsequent questions. There are a few conventions you should keep in mind when using filters:

Try to avoid having more than three levels (two jumps) for any question

Too many jumps will confuse the respondent and may discourage them from continuing with the survey.

• if only two levels, use graphic to jump (e.g., arrow and box)

if possible, jump to a new page

If you can't fit the response to a filter on a single page, it's probably best to be able to say something like "If YES, please turn to page 4" rather that "If YES, please go to Question 38" because the respondent will generally have an easier time finding a page than a specific question.

Question Content

For each question in your survey, you should ask yourself how well it addresses the content you are trying to get at. Here are some content-related questions you can ask about your survey questions.

Is the Question Necessary/Useful?

Examine each question to see if you need to ask it at all and if you need to ask it at the level of detail you currently have.

• Do you need the age of each child or just the number of children under 16?
• Do you need to ask income or can you estimate?

Are Several Questions Needed?   

This is the classic problem of the double-barreled question. You should think about splitting each of the following questions into two separate ones. You can often spot these kinds of problems by looking for the conjunction "and" in your question.

• What are your feelings towards African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans?
• What do you think of proposed changes in benefits and hours?

Another reason you might need more than one question is that the question you ask does not cover all possibilities. For instance, if you ask about earnings, the respondent might not mention all income (e.g., dividends, gifts). Or, if you ask the respondents if they're in favor of public TV, they might not understand that you're asking generally. They may not be in favor of public TV for themselves (they never watch it), but might favor it very much for their children (who watch Sesame Street regularly). You might be better off asking two questions, one for their own viewing and one for other members of their household.

Sometimes you need to ask additional questions because your question does not give you enough context to interpret the answer. For instance, if you ask about attitudes towards Catholics, can you interpret this without finding out about their attitudes towards religion in general, or other religious groups?

       At times, you need to ask additional questions because your question does not determine the intensity of the respondent's attitude or belief. For example, if they say they support public TV, you probably should also ask them whether they ever watch it or if they would be willing to have their tax dollars spent on it. It's one thing for a respondent to tell you they support something. But the intensity of that response is greater if they are willing to back their sentiment of support with their behavior.

Exercise:

What additional questions you think you need to ask to determine the intensity of respondent’s belief about the king and his governance?  

Do Respondents Have the Needed Information?

Look at each question in your survey to see whether the respondent is likely to have the necessary information to be able to answer the question. For example, let's say you want to ask the question:

Do you think Dean Rusk acted correctly in the Bay of Pigs crisis?

The respondent won't be able to answer this question if they have no idea who Dean Rusk was or what the Bay of Pigs crisis was. In surveys of television viewing, you cannot expect that the respondent can answer questions about shows they have never watched. You should ask a filter question first (e.g., Have you ever watched the show ER?) before asking them their opinions about it.

Does the Question Need to be More Specific?

Sometimes we ask our questions too generally and the information we obtain is more difficult to interpret. For example, let's say you want to find out respondent's opinions about a specific book. You could ask them

How well did you like the book?

on some scale ranging from "Not At All" to "Extremely Well." But what would their response mean? What does it mean to say you liked a book very well? Instead, you might as questions designed to be more specific like:

Did you recommend the book to others?

or

Did you look for other books by that author?

Is Question Sufficiently General?

You can err in the other direction as well by being too specific. For instance, if you ask someone to list the televisions program they liked best in the past week, you could get a very different answer than if you asked them which show they've enjoyed most over the past year. Perhaps a show they don't usually like had a great episode in the past week, or their show was preempted by another program.

Is Question Biased or Loaded?

One danger in question-writing is that your own biases and blind-spots may affect the wording (see Decisions About Question Wording). For instance, you might generally be in favor of tax cuts. If you ask a question like:

What do you see as the benefits of a tax cut?     

You’re only asking about one side of the issue. You might get a very different picture of the respondents' positions if you also asked about the disadvantages of tax cuts. The same thing could occur if you are in favor of public welfare and you ask:

What do you see as the disadvantages of eliminating welfare?

without also asking about the potential benefits.

Will Respondent Answer Truthfully?

For each question on your survey, ask yourself whether the respondent will have any difficulty answering the question truthfully. If there is some reason why they may not, consider rewording the question. For instance, some people are sensitive about answering questions about their exact age or income. In this case, you might give them response brackets to choose from (e.g., between 30 and 40 years old, between $50,000 and $100,000 annual income). Sometimes even bracketed responses won't be enough. Some people do not like to share how much money they give to charitable causes (they may be afraid of being solicited even more). No matter how you word the question, they would not be likely to tell you their contribution rate. But sometimes you can do this by posing the question in terms of a hypothetical projective respondent (a little bit like a projective test). In this case, you might get reasonable estimates if you ask the respondent how much money "people you know" typically give in a year to charitable causes. Finally, you can sometimes dispense with asking a question at all if you can obtain the answer unobtrusively (see Unobtrusive Measures). If you are interested in finding out what magazines the respondent reads, you might instead tell them you are collecting magazines for a recycling drive and ask if they have any old ones to donate (of course, you have to consider the ethical implications of such deception!).

Question Wording

One of the major difficulties in writing good survey questions is getting the wording right. Even slight wording differences can confuse the respondent or lead to incorrect interpretations of the question. Here, I outline some questions you can ask about how you worded each of your survey questions.

Can the Question be Misunderstood?

The survey author has to always be on the lookout for questions that could be misunderstood or confusing. For instance, if you ask a person for their nationality, it might not be clear what you want (Do you want someone from Malaysia to say Malaysian, Asian, or Pacific Islander?). Or, if you ask for marital status, do you want someone to say simply that they are either married or not married? Or, do you want more detail (like divorced, widow/widower, etc.)?

Some terms are just too vague to be useful. For instance, if you ask a question about the "mass media," what do you mean? The newspapers? Radio? Television?

What kind of headache remedy do you use?

Do you want to know what brand name medicine they take? Do you want to know about "home" remedies? Are you asking whether they prefer a pill, capsule or caplet?

What Assumptions Does the Question Make?

Sometimes we don't stop to consider how a question will appear from the respondent's point-of-view. We don't think about the assumptions behind our questions. For instance, if you ask what social class someone's in, you assume that they know what social class is and that they think of themselves as being in one. In this kind of case, you may need to use a filter question first to determine whether either of these assumptions is true.

Is the time frame specified?

Whenever you use the words "will", "could", "might", or "may" in a question, you might suspect that the question asks a time-related question. Be sure that, if it does, you have specified the time frame precisely. For instance, you might ask:

Do you think Congress will cut taxes?

or something like

Do you think Congress could successfully resist tax cuts?

Neither of these questions specifies a time frame.

How personal is the wording?

With a change of just a few words, a question can go from being relatively impersonal to probing into your private perspectives. Consider the following three questions, each of which asks about the respondent's satisfaction with working conditions:

• Are working conditions satisfactory or not satisfactory in the plant where you work?
• Do you feel that working conditions are satisfactory or not satisfactory in the plant where you work?
• Are you personally satisfied with working conditions in the plant where you work?

The first question is stated from a fairly detached, objective viewpoint. The second asks how you "feel." The last asks whether you are "personally satisfied." Be sure the questions in your survey are at an appropriate level for your context. And, be sure there is consistency in this across questions in your survey.

Is the wording too direct?

There are times when asking a question too directly may be too threatening or disturbing for respondents. For instance, consider a study where you want to discuss battlefield experiences with former soldiers who experienced trauma. Examine the following three question options:

• How did you feel about being in the war?
• How well did the equipment hold up in the field?
• How well were new recruits trained?

The first question may be too direct. For this population it may elicit powerful negative emotions based on their recollections. The second question is a less direct one. It asks about equipment in the field, but, for this population, may also lead the discussion toward more difficult issues to discuss directly. The last question is probably the least direct and least threatening. Bashing the new recruits is standard protocol in almost any social context. The question is likely to get the respondent talking, recounting anecdotes, without eliciting much stress. Of course, all of this may simply be begging the question. If you are doing a study where the respondents may experience high levels of stress because of the questions you ask, you should reconsider the ethics of doing the study.

Other Wording Issues

The nuances of language guarantee that the task of the question writer will be endlessly complex. Without trying to generate an exhaustive list, here are a few other questions to keep in mind:

• Does the question contain difficult or unclear terminology?
• Does the question make each alternative explicit?
• Is the wording objectionable?
• Is the wording loaded or slanted?

Response Format

The response format is how you collect the answer from the respondent. Let's start with a simple distinction between what we'll call unstructured response formats and structured response formats. [On this page, I'll use standard web-based form fields to show you how various response formats might look on the web. If you want to see how these are generated, select the View Source option on your web browser.]

Structured Response Formats

Structured formats help the respondent to respond more easily and help the researcher to accumulate and summarize responses more efficiently. But, they can also constrain the respondent and limit the researcher's ability to understand what the respondent really means. There are many different structured response formats, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. We'll review the major ones here.

Fill-In-The-Blank. One of the simplest response formats is a blank line. A blank line can be used for a number of different response types. For instance:

Please enter your gender:

_____ Male

_____ Female

Here, the respondent would probably put a check mark or an X next to the response. This is also an example of a dichotomous response, because it only has two possible values. Other common dichotomous responses are True/False and Yes/No. Here's another common use of a fill-in-the-blank response format:

Please enter your preference for the following candidates where '1' = your first choice, '2' = your second choice, and so on.

_____ Robert Dole

_____ Colin Powell

_____ Bill Clinton

_____ Al Gore

In this example, the respondent writes a number in each blank. Notice that here, we expect the respondent to place a number on every blank, whereas in the previous example, we expect to respondent to choose only one. Then, of course, there's the classic:

NAME: ________________________

And here's the same fill-in-the-blank response item in web format:

NAME: 

Of course, there's always the classic fill-in-the-blank test item:

One of President Lincoln's most famous speeches, the  Address, only lasted a few minutes when delivered.

Check The Answer. The respondent places a check next to the response(s). The simplest form would be the example given above where we ask the person to indicate their gender. Sometimes, we supply a box that the person can fill in with an 'X' (which is sort of a variation on the check mark. Here's a web version of the checkbox:

Please check if you have the following item on the computer you use most:

modem
printer
CD-ROM drive
joystick
scanner

Notice that in this example, it is possible for you to check more than one response. By convention, we usually use the checkmark format when we want to allow the respondent to select multiple items.

We sometimes refer to this as a multi-option variable. You have to be careful when you analyze data from a multi-option variable. Because the respondent can select any of the options, you have to treat this type of variable in your analysis as though each option is a separate variable. For instance, for each option we would normally enter either a '0' if the respondent did not check it or a '1' if the respondent did check it. For the example above, if the respondent had only a modem and CD-ROM drive, we would enter the sequence 1, 0, 1, 0, 0. There is a very important reason why you should code this variable as either 0 or 1 when you enter the data. If you do, and you want to determine what percent of your sample has a modem, all you have to do is compute the average of the 0's and 1's for the modem variable. For instance, if you have 10 respondents and only 3 have a modem, the average would be 3/10 = .30 or 30%, which is the percent who checked that item.

The example above is also a good example of a checklist item. Whenever you use a checklist, you want to be sure that you ask the following questions:

• Are all of the alternatives covered?
• Is the list of reasonable length?
• Is the wording impartial?
• Is the form of the response easy, uniform?

Sometimes you may not be sure that you have covered all of the possible responses in a checklist. If that is the case, you should probably allow the respondent to write in any other options that may apply.

Circle The Answer. Sometimes the respondent is asked to circle an item to indicate their response. Usually we are asking them to circle a number. For instance, we might have the following:

Unstructured Response Formats

While there is a wide variety of structured response formats, there are relatively few unstructured ones. What is an unstructured response format? Generally, it's written text. If the respondent (or interviewer) writes down text as the response, you've got an unstructured response format. These can vary from short comment boxes to the transcript of an interview.