Campanelli
Survey Research Methods

Dr. Pamela Campanelli is a Survey Methods Consultant and U.K. Chartered Statistician. She received her Ph.D. in statistics from the London School of Economics, and an M.A. in applied social research and B.A. in psychology from the University of Michigan. Prior to becoming an independent consultant, she was a Research Associate at the Office of Educational Resources and Research at the University of Michigan, a Survey Statistician at the Center for Survey Methods Research at the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Chief Research Officer at the UK Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, and Research Director at the Survey Methods Centre at the National Centre for Social Research, London. Her main interests and publications are in the study of survey error and data quality issues, with a special emphasis on questionnaire design, question testing strategies, interviewing techniques, survey nonresponse, and survey sampling. In addition to her consultancy work, she regularly teaches short courses for the UK Centre for Applied Social Surveys (CASS), the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research (CCSR), the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), UK government departments (e.g., Audit Commission, ONS, DEFRA, NISRA), UK Survey Research companies (e.g., NatCen, BMRB, Ipsos-MORI), UK Universities (e.g., the University of Kent, Newcastle, Sussex), the University of Michigan Summer Institute (which is linked to the Joint Program in Survey Methodology), and the Swiss Summer School and the University of Hong Kong, as well as for various other institutions and businesses (see www.thesurveycoach.com).

Workshop contents and objectives

Contents

This course introduces students to the principles and procedures of survey research. It focuses on the design and collection phases. Topics include:

• Survey planning, timetabling, budgeting and management
• Selecting a survey data collection mode (e.g., face-to-face, telephone, postal, or web)
• The role of the interviewer and how to do quantitative interviewing
• Guidelines for self-completion surveys
• An introduction to survey sampling
• Questionnaire design
• General principles of writing good survey questions
• Special issues for factual, non-factual, and sensitive questions
• The questionnaire as a whole and the importance of visual layout in self-completion questionnaires
• Approaches for testing questions
• The collection and review of actual pilot data
• Processing and coding the questionnaire material so that it is ready for data analysis
• Initial analysis of pretest data
• Strategies for minimising nonresponse before it happens
• Other topics, depending on time (e.g., an introduction to weighting, questionnaire translations, writing reports)

The course will have two strands. The first will consist of formal lectures with respect to the survey methodology literature and the theoretical underpinnings of survey research. The second will be to examine survey research from a more informal and practical perspective. It will involve group workshops and exercises where participants are able to put the aspects of theory into practice.

Course Objectives

• To raise participants' awareness of all the different aspects involved in the creation and implementation of a quantitative social survey.
• To facilitate participants to become "discerning consumers" of survey research who are able to recognise the advantages and limitations of survey data when reading about survey results, conducting secondary analysis on survey data or commissioning a survey.
• To facilitate participants to be able to conduct their own high quality survey.

Bibliography

Texts used for the course

• Fowler, F.J. Jr., (1995), Improving Survey Questions: Design and Evaluation, Applied Social Research Methods Series Volume 38, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Czaja, R. and Blair, J. (2005), Designing Surveys: A Guide to Decisions and Procedures, Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.

Other references which are particularly useful

• Converse , J. and Presser, S. (1986), Survey Questions: Handcrafting the Standardized Questionnaire, Sage Series No. 63, Thousand Oaks: Sage.
• Dillman, D. (2000), Mail and Internet Surveys: The Tailored Design Method, New York: Wiley.
• Fowler, F.J. Jr. (2008). Survey Research Methods. 4th Edition. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
• Fowler, F.J. and Mangione, T.W., (1990), Standardized Survey Interviewing: Minimizing Interviewer-Related Error, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• [*] Scheuren, F., What is a Survey?, Washington, DC: American Statistical Association. (Available off the internet http://www.amstat.org/sections/srms/ )
• Groves, R.M. et al (eds) (2004), Survey Methodology, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

[*] Useful to look at in advance of course

Prerequisites

There are no statistical prerequisites for this course, although participants will find it helpful to have a basic knowledge of statistics for the discussion on sampling.

Participants will find it helpful to have knowledge of Windows and SPSS for Windows.