Ch. 7 - Survey Research Flashcards
Panel study (AKA longitudinal design)
- When the same people are tracked and surveyed at 2 or more points in time
- “Two-wave” panel study = people surveyed at 2 points in time
- “Three-wave” panel study = people surveyed at 3 points in time
Response set
- Is a tendency to respond to all questions from a particular perspective rather than to provide answers that are directly related to the questions
- Example response set is “social desirability”, answering in the way that they think most people would respond or will make them look good
What are the 3 general types of survey questions?
- Attitudes and Beliefs - Focuses on the way people evaluate, feel, and think about issues
- Facts & Demographics - Ask people to indicate things they know about themselves and their situation
- Behaviours - Focus on past behaviours or intended future behaviours
Difficulties understanding survey questions can include…
- unfamiliar terms
- vague or imprecise terms
- ungrammatical sentence structure
- phrasing that overloads working memory
- embedding the question with misleading information
Things to avoid when creating survey questions…
- Unnecessary complexity - avoid jargon and technical terms that people won’t understand
- Double-barrelled questions - avoid questions that ask two things at once
- Loaded questions - is written to lead people to respond in one way
- Negative wording - avoid phrasing questions with negatives
- “Yes-saying” or “nay-saying” response set - When you ask several questions about a topic, a respondent may either agree (yea) or disagree (nay) with all the questions
Rating scales
-Ask people to provide “how much” judgements on any number of dimensions
Graphic rating scale
- Requires a mark along a continuous 100mm line that is anchored with descriptions at each end
- The researcher uses a ruler to measure the score on a scale that ranges from 0 to 100
Semantic differential scale
- Is a way to measure the meaning that people ascribe to concepts
- Respondents rate any concept on a series of bipolar adjectives using 7-point scales
- Rated along 3 basic dimensions: evaluation, activity, potency
Non-verbal scale
- In some circumstances, researchers might want to offer images instead of words or numbers
- Example, for young children you may use sad to smiling faces
What are the 2 ways to administer surveys?
- Questionnaire format
2. Verbal format
Pros and cons of questionnaires
Pros:
- Inexpensive
- Allow respondent to be completely anonymous
Cons:
- Requires respondents to be motivated and attentive enough to complete them
- Some respondents may have difficulty reading and understanding the questions
Interviewer bias
Biases that can arise from the fact that the interviewer is a person interacting with another person. Examples are:
- The interviewer could subtly influence the respondent’s answers by inadvertently showing approval or disapproval of certain answers
- Personal characteristics of the interviewer (ex. attractiveness, age, or race) might influence the answers
- Interviewer may have expectations that could lead them to “see what they are looking for” in respondent’s answers. Which could potentially bias their interpretations of responses
3 methods for conducting interviews
- Face to face - The interviewer and respondent meet to conduct the interview. Expensive and time consuming. Mostly used for small sample size
- Telephone interviews - For large-scale surveys, completed by phone or by skype. Less expensive and data can be collected relatively quickly
- Focus group interviews - An interview with a group of about 6-10 people that are brought together for a period of usually 2-3 hours. Members are often selected because they have particular knowledge or interest in the topic. Questions tend to be open-ended.
Population
-Is a set of people of interest to the researcher
Sampling
- Researchers typically collect data on a sample to learn something about a larger population.
- With proper sampling, we can use information obtained from the respondent’s who were sampled to estimate characteristics of the population as a whole.
Confidence interval
- A range of plausible values for the population value; values outside the confidence interval are implausible
- Narrower confidence intervals indicate more precise estimates with less sampling error
- Larger sample sizes reduce measurement error, and therefore reduce the size of the confidence interval
External validity
- In the survey context, achieving external validity means ensuring that the sample is highly representative of the population from which it is drawn
- First, you would RANDOM SAMPLE from a population that contains ALL people in the population of interest
Sampling frame
-Is the ACTUAL population of people from which a random sample will be drawn
Response rate
-The response rate in a survey is the percentage of people in the sample who actually completed the survey
2 techniques for sampling individuals from a population?
- Probability sampling - each member of the population has a specifiable probability of being chosen. Is important when you want to make PRECISE statements about a specific population based on your survey results
- Non-probability sampling - we don’t know the probability of any particular member of the population being chosen
Simple random sampling
- Every member of the population has an equal probability of being selected for the sample
- Whenever people are randomly selected from a specific population to participate in a study, the resulting sample is called a RANDOM SAMPLE
Stratified random sampling
-The population is divided into subgroups (or strata), and then simple random sampling is used to select sample members from each stratum.
Cluster sampling
- Rather than randomly sampling from a list of people, the researcher can identify “clusters” of people and then sample from these clusters
- After the clusters are chosen, all people in each cluster are included in the sample
- Most often, use of cluster sampling requires a series of samples from larger to smaller clusters, ie. a “multistage” approach
3 types of probability sampling
- Simple random sampling
- Stratified random sampling
- Cluster sampling
3 types of non-probability sampling
- Convenience sampling
- Purposive sampling
- Quota sampling
Convenience sampling (AKA haphazard sampling)
- Participants are recruited wherever you can find them
- Such procedures are likely to introduce bias into the sample so that the sample may not accurately reflect the population
Purposive sampling
-The “purpose” is to obtain a sample of people who meet some predetermined criterion
Quota sampling
- A researcher who uses this technique chooses a sample that reflects the numerical composition of various subgroups in the population
- Thus, quot sampling is similar to the stratified sampling procedure, but without the randomness
Survey research
-Uses questionnaires and interviews to ask people to provide information about themselves - their attitudes, beliefs, demographics, and other facts, as well as past or intended future events
