Chapter 7: Survey Research
In 2008, the voters of the United States elected their first African American president, Barack Obama. It may not surprise you to learn that when President Obama was coming of age in the 1970s, one-quarter of Americans reported that they would not vote for a qualified African American presidential nominee. Three decades later, when President Obama ran for the presidency, fewer than 8% of Americans still held that position, and President Obama won the election (Smith, 2009). We know about these trends in voter opinion because the General Social Survey (https://www.norc.uchicago.edu/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.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- Define survey research.
- Identify when it is appropriate to employ survey research as a data-collection strategy.
- Identify and explain the strengths of survey research.
- Identify and explain the weaknesses of survey research.
- Define response rate, and discuss some of the current thinking about response rates.
- Define cross-sectional surveys, provide an example of a cross-sectional survey, and outline some of the drawbacks of cross-sectional research.
- Describe the various types of longitudinal surveys.
- Define retrospective surveys, and identify their strengths and weaknesses.
- Discuss some of the benefits and drawbacks of the various methods of delivering self-administered questionnaires.
- Identify the steps one should take in order to write effective survey questions.
- Describe some of the ways that survey questions might confuse respondents and how to overcome that possibility.
- Recite the two response option guidelines when writing closed-ended questions.
- Define fence-sitting and floating.
- Describe the steps involved in constructing a well-designed questionnaire.
- Discuss why pretesting is important.
