Lecture 5: Survey Research Flashcards
What is the formal term for surveys?
Sample survey
What is a survey?
A method of collecting primary data in which info is gathered:
- from a representative sample of people
- using spoken or written questions.
Are surveys qualitative or quantitative?
Can be both. Qualitative - e.g. open ended questions Quantitative - e.g. scale items - Standardised - Pre-arranged order - Pre-coded fixed alternatives
What can survey data relate to? (7 main ideas)
- Demographic info (e.g. age, ethnicity, income)
- Factual info (e.g. product ownership)
- Social interactions (e.g. social networks, social activities)
- Cognition (e.g. beliefs in claims, memory for promotions)
- Affect (e.g. attitudes and opinions, preferences)
- Behaviour (e.g. purchase behaviour and purchase intentions)
- State and trait orientations (e.g. personality characteristics)
- and anything else that might be of interest to a market researcher
What are the advantages to surveys? (4 main points, 5 dot points)
Standardisation
- Established items (e.g. scales)
- Commonly understood instrument
Easily administered
- Large samples
- Low cost
- Geographical flexibility
Ease of data analysis
Generalisability of findings
What are the drawbacks of surveys?
Issues of poor design
- Validity
- Reliability
- Language (jargon, misinterpretation)
- Choices of scales
Issues of execution
- Interviewers (e.g. trustworthiness)
- Representativeness and size of sample
- Appropriate data screening, cleaning and analysis
What are the challenges of surveys? (6 points)
- People often base responses on recent occurrences or salient events
- People often lack insight into their own behaviours and experiences, and sometimes improvise
- People often respond in a socially desirable manner, or with what they feel is the “correct” answer
- People can interpret the same wording differently
- Asking participants the same question twice can yield different answers across sessions (and also within one session)
- Valences associated with words can lead responses, as can the intensity of the words
Unlike other research methods, surveys allow for…? (4 points)
- Ready critique from others
- Replicability
- Storage of raw data
- Alternative-analysis and re-analysis
Inaccuracies in survey data may be due to…?
- Reliance on data from sample rather than population (random sampling error)
- Imperfect design and data collection methods (systemic error/bias)
What are random sampling errors? (aka sampling errors)
Error associated with measuring a sample rather than the full population.
Chance variation in the sample (even randomly selected)
- sample size
- sample selection
What is systemic error/bias?
Non-sampling error, it’s an error resulting from some imperfect aspect of the research design, or in execution of the research
What is non-response error?
- Non-participants: who did not participate? Any systematic non-participation? Not at home, refusals.
- Self-selection bias: who did participate? Over-represents extreme positions, under-represents indifference. Check sample against wider population. Check sample against non-participants.
- Item non-response
What is self-selection bias?
When you decide if you participate in the survey, like if you choose to fill out a customer satisfaction form.
Over represents extreme positions, under represents indifferences.
Should be checked against wider population and non-participants
What are the types of response bias? (7 points)
- Acquiescence bias: tendency to respond positively to all questions or to consistently concur with a particular perspective
- Extremity bias: tendency to respond using extremes
- avoiding mid-point
- Interviewer bias: tendency to respond in a particular way because of the presence of the interviewer (or interviewer characteristics)
- Auspices bias: a tendency to respond in a particular way because of the organisation conducting the study
- Social desirability bias: tendency to respond in a way that shows the respondent in a socially desirable manner
- education, income, open-mindedness
- checks built into many surveys (e.g. grooming, etiquette)
- Deliberate falsification
- Careless responses
What are the types of administrative error?
- Data processing error: for example, data entry error
- Sample selection error
- error caused by improper selection of sample design or execution
- for example, inclusion of mid-level sports fans in sample, when goal is to recruit high-level sports fans
- Interviewer error: for example, interviewer mis-recording responses, or making assumptions, bypassing items
- Interviewer cheating: for example, falsifying data, skipping questions, or completing responses (finish task earlier, fulfil quota)
