A nuts-and-bolts guide to conducting your own professional-qualitysurveys without paying professional fees. How can you gauge publicsupport for a cause or test the market for a product or service?What are the best methods for validating opinions for use in apaper or dissertation? A well-documented survey is the answer. Butwhat if you don't have thousands of dollars to commission one? Noproblem. How to Conduct Your Own Survey gives you everything youneed to do it yourself! Without any prior training, you can learnexpert techniques for conducting accurate, low-cost surveys. Instep-by-step, down-to-earth language, Priscilla Salant and Don A.Dillman give you the tools you need to: * Determine which type of survey is best for you * Estimate the cost of your survey * Conduct mail, telephone, and face-to-face surveys * Draw accurate samples * Write effective questionnaires * Compile and report results * Avoid common survey errors * Find reliable outside assistance * And much more

This basic introduction to survey research for public administration is organised around the fundamental stages of the research process - planning, design, implementation, analysis and presentation

Planning and conducting successful surveys requires a great deal of time, energy and know-how. While the time and energy components are relatively easy to find, what is often difficult is acquiring the know-how actually to plan, conduct and analyze a survey. An invaluable resource, The Survey Kit offers all the information necessary for conducting a state-of-the-art survey - from the initial planning stages through analyzing and reporting the data.

A complete and comprehensive collaboration providing insight on future approaches to telephone survey methodology Over the past fifteen years, advances in technology have transformed the field of survey methodology, from how interviews are conducted to the management and analysis of compiled data. Advances in Telephone Survey Methodology is an all—encompassing and authoritative resource that presents a theoretical, methodological, and statistical treatment of current practices while also establishing a discussion on how state—of—the—art developments in telecommunications have and will continue to revolutionize the telephone survey process. Seventy—five prominent international researchers and practitioners from government, academic, and private sectors have collaborated on this pioneering volume to discuss basic survey techniques and introduce the future directions of the telephone survey. Concepts and findings are organized in four parts—sampling and estimation, data collection, operations, and nonresponse—equipping the reader with the needed practical applications to approach issues such as choice of target population, sample design, questionnaire construction, interviewing training, and measurement error. The book also introduces important topics that have been overlooked in previous literature, including: The impact of mobile telephones on telephone surveys and the rising presence of mobile—only households worldwide The design and construction of questionnaires using Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) software The emerging use of wireless communication and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) versus the telephone Methods for measuring and improving interviewer performance and productivity Privacy, confidentiality, and respondent burden as main factors in telephone survey nonresponse Procedures for the adjustment of nonresponse in telephone surveys In—depth reviews of the literature presented along with a full bibliography, assembled from references throughout the world Advances in Telephone Survey Methodology is an indispensable reference for survey researchers and practitioners in almost any discipline involving research methods such as sociology, social psychology, survey methodology, and statistics. This book also serves as an excellent text for courses and seminars on survey methods at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

To the uninformed, surveys appear to be an easy type of research to design and conduct, but when students and professionals delve deeper, they encounter the vast complexities that the range and practice of survey methods present. To complicate matters, technology has rapidly affected the way surveys can be conducted; today, surveys are conducted via cell phone, the Internet, email, interactive voice response, and other technology-based modes. Thus, students, researchers, and professionals need both a comprehensive understanding of these complexities and a revised set of tools to meet the challenges. In conjunction with top survey researchers around the world and with Nielsen Media Research serving as the corporate sponsor, the Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods presents state-of-the-art information and methodological examples from the field of survey research. Although there are other "how-to" guides and references texts on survey research, none is as comprehensive as this Encyclopedia, and none presents the material in such a focused and approachable manner. With more than 600 entries, this resource uses a Total Survey Error perspective that considers all aspects of possible survey error from a cost-benefit standpoint. Key Features Covers all major facets of survey research methodology, from selecting the sample design and the sampling frame, designing and pretesting the questionnaire, data collection, and data coding, to the thorny issues surrounding diminishing response rates, confidentiality, privacy, informed consent and other ethical issues, data weighting, and data analyses Presents a Reader′s Guide to organize entries around themes or specific topics and easily guide users to areas of interest Offers cross-referenced terms, a brief listing of Further Readings, and stable Web site URLs following most entries The Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods is specifically written to appeal to beginning, intermediate, and advanced students, practitioners, researchers, consultants, and consumers of survey-based information.

This book addresses the needs of researchers who want to conduct surveys online. Issues discussed include sampling from online populations, developing online and mobile questionnaires, and administering electronic surveys, are unique to digital surveys. Others, like creating reliable and valid survey questions, data analysis strategies, and writing the survey report, are common to all survey environments. This single resource captures the particulars of conducting digital surveys from start to finish

Written with the needs and goals of a novice researcher in mind, this fully updated third edition provides an accurate account of how modern survey research is actually conducted. In addition to providing examples of alternative procedures, Designing Surveys shows how classic principles and recent research guide decision-making from setting the basic features of the survey through development, testing, and data collection.

The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.

For many household surveys in the United States, responses rates have been steadily declining for at least the past two decades. A similar decline in survey response can be observed in all wealthy countries. Efforts to raise response rates have used such strategies as monetary incentives or repeated attempts to contact sample members and obtain completed interviews, but these strategies increase the costs of surveys. This review addresses the core issues regarding survey nonresponse. It considers why response rates are declining and what that means for the accuracy of survey results. These trends are of particular concern for the social science community, which is heavily invested in obtaining information from household surveys. The evidence to date makes it apparent that current trends in nonresponse, if not arrested, threaten to undermine the potential of household surveys to elicit information that assists in understanding social and economic issues. The trends also threaten to weaken the validity of inferences drawn from estimates based on those surveys. High nonresponse rates create the potential or risk for bias in estimates and affect survey design, data collection, estimation, and analysis. The survey community is painfully aware of these trends and has responded aggressively to these threats. The interview modes employed by surveys in the public and private sectors have proliferated as new technologies and methods have emerged and matured. To the traditional trio of mail, telephone, and face-to-face surveys have been added interactive voice response (IVR), audio computer-assisted self-interviewing (ACASI), web surveys, and a number of hybrid methods. Similarly, a growing research agenda has emerged in the past decade or so focused on seeking solutions to various aspects of the problem of survey nonresponse; the potential solutions that have been considered range from better training and deployment of interviewers to more use of incentives, better use of the information collected in the data collection, and increased use of auxiliary information from other sources in survey design and data collection. Nonresponse in Social Science Surveys: A Research Agenda also documents the increased use of information collected in the survey process in nonresponse adjustment.

The classic survey design reference, updated for the digital age For over two decades, Dillman's classic text on survey design has aided both students and professionals in effectively planning and conducting mail, telephone, and, more recently, Internet surveys. The new edition is thoroughly updated and revised, and covers all aspects of survey research. It features expanded coverage of mobile phones, tablets, and the use of do-it-yourself surveys, and Dillman's unique Tailored Design Method is also thoroughly explained. This invaluable resource is crucial for any researcher seeking to increase response rates and obtain high-quality feedback from survey questions. Consistent with current emphasis on the visual and aural, the new edition is complemented by copious examples within the text and accompanying website. This heavily revised Fourth Edition includes: Strategies and tactics for determining the needs of a given survey, how to design it, and how to effectively administer it How and when to use mail, telephone, and Internet surveys to maximum advantage Proven techniques to increase response rates Guidance on how to obtain high-quality feedback from mail, electronic, and other self-administered surveys Direction on how to construct effective questionnaires, including considerations of layout The effects of sponsorship on the response rates of surveys Use of capabilities provided by newly mass-used media: interactivity, presentation of aural and visual stimuli. The Fourth Edition reintroduces the telephone—including coordinating land and mobile. Grounded in the best research, the book offers practical how-to guidelines and detailed examples for practitioners and students alike.