Survey (human research)
In research of human subjects, a survey is a list of questions aimed at extracting specific data from a particular group of people. Surveys may be conducted by phone, mail, via the internet, and sometimes face-to-face on busy street corners or in malls. It is used to increase knowledge in fields such as social research and demography. It is used to increase knowledge in fields such as social research and demography.
Contents
Types
Census
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A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population.[1] The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses include agriculture, business, and traffic censuses. The United Nations defines the essential features of population and housing censuses as "individual enumeration, universality within a defined territory, simultaneity and defined periodicity", and recommends that population censuses be taken at least every 10 years.
Other household surveys
Other surveys than the census may explore characteristics in households, such as fertility, family structure, and demographics.
Major household surveys include:
- General Household Survey, conducted in private households in Great Britain. It is a repeated cross-sectional study, conducted annually, which uses a sample of 9,731 households in the 2006 survey.
- Generations and Gender Survey, conducted in several countries in Europe as well as Australia and Japan.[2] The programme has collected least one wave of surveys in 19 countries, with an average of 9,000 respondents per country.[3]
- Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, where the wave 1 panel consisted of 7,682 households and 19,914 individuals
- Integrated Household Survey, a survey made up of multiple other surveys in the UK. It includes about 340,000 respondents, making it the largest collection of social data in the UK after the census.[4]
- National Survey of Family Growth, conducted in the United States by the National Center for Health Statistics division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to understand trends related to fertility, family structure, and demographics in the United States.[5] The 2006-2010 NSFG surveyed 22,682 interviews.
- Panel Study of Income Dynamics in the United States, wherein data have been collected from the same families and their descendants since 1968. The study involved more than 9,000 individuals as of 2009.
- Socio-Economic Panel, a longitudinal panel dataset of the population in Germany. It is a household based study which started in 1984 and which reinterviews adult household members annually. In 2007, the study involved about 12,000 households, with more than 20,000 adult persons sampled.
- UK households: a longitudinal study, now known as Understanding Society.[6] Its sample size is 40,000 households from the United Kingdom or approx. 100,000 individuals.
Opinion poll
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An opinion poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence intervals.
Methodology
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A single survey is made of at least a sample (or full population in the case of a census), a method of data collection (e.g., a questionnaire) and individual questions or items that become data that can be analyzed statistically. A single survey may focus on different types of topics such as preferences (e.g., for a presidential candidate), opinions (e.g., should abortion be legal?), behavior (smoking and alcohol use), or factual information (e.g., income), depending on its purpose. Since survey research is almost always based on a sample of the population, the success of the research is dependent on the representativeness of the sample with respect to a target population of interest to the researcher. That target population can range from the general population of a given country to specific groups of people within that country, to a membership list of a professional organization, or list of students enrolled in a school system (see also sampling (statistics) and survey sampling).
History
The most famous public survey in America is the national census. Held every ten years, the census attempts to count all persons, and also obtain demographic data about factors such as household income, ethnicity, and religion. The most recent survey was conducted in 2010, the results of which are available online at http://www.census.gov/2010census/data/
Nielsen ratings are another example of public surveys. Nielsen ratings track media-viewing habits (radio, television, internet, print) the results of which are used to make decisions by and about the mass media. Some Nielsen ratings localize the data points to give marketing firms more specific information with which to target customers. Demographic data is also used to understand what influences work best to market consumer products, political campaigns, etc.
See also
References
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<references />, or <references group="..." />Further reading
- Schaff, Philip, The Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. III (2006) http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/encyc/encyc13/htm/TOC.htm
- Wilbur Schramm, "The Beginnings of Communication Study in America: A Personal Memoir", ed. Steven H. Chaffee and Everett M. Rogers. (1997) Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.
- Sunstein, Cass, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge.(2006) Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom.
- Tapscott, Don & Anthony Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. (2006) Penguin, New York.
External links
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Social survey research
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- ↑ Integrated Household Survey
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- ↑ Understandingsociety.org.uk
