Erin E. Ruel - The Practice of Survey Research: Theory and Applications

Theory and Applications

FOR INFORMATION:

SAGE Publications, Inc.

2455 Teller Road

Thousand Oaks, California 91320

E-mail: order@sagepub.com

SAGE Publications Ltd.

1 Olivers Yard

55 City Road

London EC1Y 1SP

United Kingdom

SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd.

B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area

Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044

India

SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte. Ltd.

3 Church Street

#10-04 Samsung Hub

Singapore 049483

Copyright 2016 by SAGE Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

All trademarks depicted within this book, including trademarks appearing as part of a screenshot, figure, or other image are included solely for the purpose of illustration and are the property of their respective holders. The use of the trademarks in no way indicates any relationship with, or endorsement by, the holders of said trademarks. SPSS is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.

Printed in the United States of America

Cataloging-in-publication data is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-4522-3527-1

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Our purpose in writing this text is to create a comprehensive survey research book that incorporates survey design, survey implementation, data management, and data analysis. Most existing books are particularly weak in this last dimension. Its not just textbooks that are weak in that area, however. Research methods courses tend to cover only the collection of data using surveys, while statistical courses cover data analysis only for perfectly clean data. Nowhere do students see the effort needed to prepare collected data for analysis, nor do they learn how to do it.

This survey textbook is based in sociological research; the book provides breadth and examples suitable for survey expertise for both graduate students and advanced undergraduate students. One or two of the chapters are more advanced than others, and instructors may decide not to include them in an undergraduate survey course. This text can be used to supplement a research methods course or can be used as a standalone text in a survey course. We attempted to break up the chapters in such a way that the text can be used in a variety of ways.

Survey research is one of the most utilized methods in the social sciences. Students may think that this means the method is pretty well standardized. But this is not the case. Each research question is distinct and raises special concerns that need to be addressed. For example, the research topic could entail having to write challenging questions. Alternatively, the topic could involve a population that is hard to find or hard to convince to participate in the research. Or, the way the survey is administered may be important given the traits or characteristics of the population. We wrote this book with the uniqueness of each research topic in mind. We are constantly having to make decisions about the many unique situations we face while trying to answer our research questions. Each chapter is framed with a list of decisions that need to be made, depending on the various challenges that may arise as the survey study is developed.

We were also driven by the desire to bring a more applied approach to the survey process. Over the course of teaching students for many years, we have found that a disconnect can occur between what is learned in the classroom and what students do outside the classroom for their undergraduate honors papers and MA theses. Therefore, the data analysis chapters include write-ups for policy reports and articles to demonstrate how to interpret and use the data to communicate findings.

At the end of each chapter we provide a list of terms that students should learn. We also include a set of critical thinking questions that students can answer to help ensure they have learned the material. We provide many real life research examples throughout the text. In addition, we provide the oh-so-important checklists that survey researchers live by to make sure they have comprehensively addressed all the decisions that need to be made.

Research ethics are an important part of any methods course. Rather that introduce ethics once in a single chapter, we added an ethics corner to many of the chapters, starting in , Implementing a Survey. In each ethics corner, issues specific to the chapter topic are raised and discussed. In this way, students can see that ethical decisions come up throughout the survey process. Ethics become less abstract.