Population-based survey experiments have become an invaluable tool for social scientists struggling to generalize laboratory-based results, and for survey researchers besieged by uncertainties about ...causality. Thanks to technological advances in recent years, experiments can now be administered to random samples of the population to which a theory applies. Yet until now, there was no self-contained resource for social scientists seeking a concise and accessible overview of this methodology, its strengths and weaknesses, and the unique challenges it poses for implementation and analysis.
Designing Effective Web Surveys is a practical guide to designing web surveys, based on empirical evidence and grounded in scientific research and theory. It is designed to guide survey practitioners ...in the art and science of developing and deploying successful web surveys. The author guides the researcher through the steps involved, from the basic building blocks and suggests ways to increase visual impact and interactivity. Throughout, he considers the importance of layout and design, and attention is also given to the way questions are put together. The book is intended for academic, government, and market researchers who design and conduct web surveys.
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Surveys undergird government statistical systems and social scientific research throughout the world. Rates of nonresponse are rising in cross-sectional surveys (those conducted during a fixed period ...of time and not repeated). Although this trend worries those concerned with the validity of survey data, there is no necessary relationship between the rate of nonresponse and the degree of bias. A high rate of nonresponse merely creates the potential for bias, but the degree of bias depends on how factors promoting nonresponse are related to variables of interest. Nonresponse can be reduced by offering financial incentives to respondents and by careful design before entering the field, creating a trade-off between cost and potential bias. When bias is suspected, it can be countered by weighting individual cases by the inverse of their response propensity. Response propensities are typically estimated using a logistic regression equation to predict the dichotomous outcome of survey participation as a function of auxiliary variables. The Multi-level Integrated Database Approach employs multiple databases to collect as much information as possible about the target sample during the initial sampling stage and at all possible levels of aggregation to maximize the accuracy of estimated response propensities.
Household Surveys in Crisis Meyer, Bruce D.; Mok, Wallace K. C.; Sullivan, James X.
The Journal of economic perspectives,
10/2015, Letnik:
29, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Household surveys, one of the main innovations in social science research of the last century, are threatened by declining accuracy due to reduced cooperation of respondents. While many indicators of ...survey quality have steadily declined in recent decades, the literature has largely emphasized rising nonresponse rates rather than other potentially more important dimensions to the problem. We divide the problem into rising rates of nonresponse, imputation, and measurement error, documenting the rise in each of these threats to survey quality over the past three decades. A fundamental problem in assessing biases due to these problems in surveys is the lack of a benchmark or measure of truth, leading us to focus on the accuracy of the reporting of government transfers. We provide evidence from aggregate measures of transfer reporting as well as linked microdata. We discuss the relative importance of misreporting of program receipt and conditional amounts of benefits received, as well as some of the conjectured reasons for declining cooperation and for survey errors. We end by discussing ways to reduce the impact of the problem including the increased use of administrative data and the possibilities for combining administrative and survey data.
This four-month study evaluated the virtual delivery of Fresh Conversations (FC). Participants were community-residing Iowans ages 60+ years. They were placed in one of four meeting groups based on ...location and participant preference: Zoom™, Adobe Connect®, group-based Zoom™ meeting, and teleconference. Participants were invited to complete a post-meeting online survey. Data analyses were completed using data from the first survey completed by each participant (n = 115). Descriptive statistics assessed response frequencies for all questions. Chi-Square and Mann–Whitney U tests assessed the differences between groups. Overall, participants were “satisfied/very satisfied” (72.1%), learned something new (85.2%), and intended to make behavior change (79.1%); no differences were detected by the group for satisfaction or reported impacts. Only 24.3% reported technical difficulties; the Adobe Connect® group reported the most difficulties (p = .004). These findings suggest virtual delivery of FC is well-received and perceived to be effective by participants.
The Changing Body Floud, Roderick; Fogel, Robert W.; Harris, Bernard ...
03/2011
eBook
Humans have become much taller and heavier, and experience healthier and longer lives than ever before in human history. However it is only recently that historians, economists, human biologists and ...demographers have linked the changing size, shape and capability of the human body to economic and demographic change. This fascinating and groundbreaking book presents an accessible introduction to the field of anthropometric history, surveying the causes and consequences of changes in health and mortality, diet and the disease environment in Europe and the United States since 1700. It examines how we define and measure health and nutrition as well as key issues such as whether increased longevity contributes to greater productivity or, instead, imposes burdens on society through the higher costs of healthcare and pensions. The result is a major contribution to economic and social history with important implications for today's developing world and the health trends of the future.
This important new book is a comparative study of social mobility based on qualitative interviews with middle-class parents in America and Britain. It addresses the key issue in stratification ...research, namely, the stability of class relations and middle-class reproduction. Drawing on interviewee accounts of how parents mobilised economic, cultural and social resources to help them into professional careers, it then considers how the interviewees, as parents, seek to increase their children's chances of educational success and occupational advancement. Middle-class parents may try to secure their children's social position but it is not an easy or straightforward affair. With the decline of the quality of state education and increased job insecurity in the labour market since the 1970s and 1980s, the reproduction of advantage is more difficult than in the affluent decades of the 1950s and 1960s. The implications for public policy, especially public investment in higher education, are considered.
Collecting, Managing, and Assessing Data Using Sample Surveys provides a thorough, step-by-step guide to the design and implementation of surveys. Beginning with a primer on basic statistics, the ...first half of the book takes readers on a comprehensive tour through the basics of survey design. Topics covered include the ethics of surveys, the design of survey procedures, the design of the survey instrument, how to write questions and how to draw representative samples. Having shown readers how to design surveys, the second half of the book discusses a number of issues surrounding their implementation, including repetitive surveys, the economics of surveys, web-based surveys, coding and data entry, data expansion and weighting, the issue of non-response, and the documenting and archiving of survey data. The book is an excellent introduction to the use of surveys for graduate students as well as a useful reference work for scholars and professionals.
This review of nonresponse in cross-sectional household surveys in the United States shows trends in nonresponse rates, the main reasons for nonresponse, and changes in the components of nonresponse. ...It shows that nonresponse is increasing but that existing methods for modeling response mechanisms do not adequately explain these changes.
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