Pam Campanelli

Survey Research Methods

Pam Campanelli

Pamela Campanelli is a survey methodologist and chartered statistician with a background in social statistics, survey methodology, and psychology from the University of Michigan and the London School of Economics. She has worked on large-scale surveys at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, the Center for Survey Methods Research at the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and the UK ESRC Centre for Micro-Social Change at the University of Essex. Most recently she was a Research Director at the Survey Methods Centre at SCPR, London.

Currently, she is an independent consultant. 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, and survey nonresponse. She regularly teaches short courses in these subjects at the University of Southampton, the University of Essex, City University, University College London, the University of Hong Kong, and for the UK Social Research Association and the UK Market Research Society.

Workshop contents and objectives

This course reviews the principles and procedures of survey research. It gives an overview of the typical survey cycle with a focus on the design and collection phases. It provides a good foundation for choosing an appropriate survey data collection method (e.g., face-to-face, telephone, or postal), for designing and testing a quantitative questionnaire and conducting quantitative interviews, as well as for processing the questionnaire material so that it is ready for data analysis. It also provides an introduction to survey sampling and strategies for minimising nonresponse before it happens.

The course will have two strands. The first will consist of formal lectures with respect to the survey 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 discussions, class exercises and a 'hands on' approach where participants will be involved in designing and implementing their own short survey questionnaire. The focus of this second strand will be on those aspects of survey implementation that are often not taught in formal courses.

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 be able to conduct their own high quality survey.

Bibliography

Basic text/overview
Converse , J. and Presser, S. (1986), Survey Questions: Handcrafting the Standardized Questionnaire, Sage Series No. 63, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

Waksberg, J. et al. (1995), What is a Survey? Part 1, What is a Survey, Part 2, How to Plan a Survey, and Part 3, How to Collect Survey Data, Washington, DC: American Statistical Association. (Available under the Section on Survey Research Methods of the American Statistical Association, http://www.amstat.org/ or go directly to http://www.stat.ncsu.edu/info/srms/survpamphlet.html)

Fowler, F.J. Jr. (1993). Survey Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Fowler, F.J. Jr., (1995), Improving Survey Questions: Design and Evaluation, Applied Social Research Methods Series Volume 38, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Groves, R. (1989), Survey Errors and Survey Costs, New York: Wiley.

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 '95 and SPSS for Windows

[Workshops]