High response rates have traditionally been considered as one of the main indicators of survey quality. Obtaining high response rates is sometimes difficult and expensive, but clearly plays a ...beneficial role in terms of improving data quality. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that simply boosting response to achieve a higher response rate will not in itself eradicate nonresponse bias. In this book the authors argue that high response rates should not be seen as a goal in themselves, but rather as part of an overall survey quality strategy based on random probability sampling and aimed at minimising nonresponse bias.
Key features of Improving Survey Response:
A detailed coverage of nonresponse issues, including a unique examination of cross-national survey nonresponse processes and outcomes.
A discussion of the potential causes of nonresponse and practical strategies to combat it.
A detailed examination of the impact of nonresponse and of techniques for adjusting for it once it has occurred.
Examples of best practices and experiments drawn from 25 European countries.
Supplemented by the European Social Survey (ESS) websites, containing materials for the measurement and analysis of nonresponse based on detailed country-level response process datasets.
The book is designed to help survey researchers and those commissioning surveys by explaining how to prioritise the reduction of nonresponse bias rather than focusing on increasing the overall response rate. It shows substantive researchers how nonresponse can impact on substantive outcomes.
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.
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.
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.
In the mid-nineteenth century, American and British governments marched with great fanfare into the marketplace of knowledge and publishing. British royal commissions of inquiry, inspectorates, and ...parliamentary committees conducted famous social inquiries into child labor, poverty, housing, and factories. The American federal government studied Indian tribes, explored the West, and investigated the condition of the South during and after the Civil War.Performing, printing, and then circulating these studies, government established an economy of exchange with its diverse constituencies. In this medium, which Frankel terms "print statism," not only tangible objects such as reports and books but knowledge itself changed hands. As participants, citizens assumed the standing of informants and readers. Even as policy investigations and official reportage became a distinctive feature of the modern governing process, buttressing the claim of the state to represent its populace, government discovered an unintended consequence: it could exercise only limited control over the process of inquiry, the behavior of its emissaries as investigators or authors, and the fate of official reports once issued and widely circulated.This study contributes to current debates over knowledge, print culture, and the growth of the state as well as the nature and history of the "public sphere." It interweaves innovative, theoretical discussions into meticulous, historical analysis.
Social Trends in American Lifeassembles a team of leading researchers to provide unparalleled insight into how American social attitudes and behaviors have changed since the 1970s. Drawing on the ...General Social Survey--a social science project that has tracked demographic and attitudinal trends in the United States since 1972--it offers a window into diverse facets of American life, from intergroup relations to political views and orientations, social affiliations, and perceived well-being.
Among the book's many important findings are the greater willingness of ordinary Americans to accord rights of free expression to unpopular groups, to endorse formal racial equality, and to accept nontraditional roles for women in the workplace, politics, and the family. Some, but not all, signs indicate that political conservatism has grown, while a few suggest that Republicans and Democrats are more polarized. Some forms of social connectedness such as neighboring have declined, as has confidence in government, while participation in organized religion has softened. Despite rising standards of living, American happiness levels have changed little, though financial and employment insecurity has risen over three decades.
Social Trends in American Lifeprovides an invaluable perspective on how Americans view their lives and their society, and on how these views have changed over the last two generations.
"A master of his craft, Giuseppe Iarossi has drawn on his extensive experience in the field to produce a wonderfully useful volume on how to do and work with surveys of industrial firms."- Kenneth L. ...Sokoloff, Department of Economics, U.C.L.A A practical how-to guide on all the steps involved with survey implementation, this volume covers survey management, questionnaire design, sampling, respondents psychology and survey participation, and data management. A comprehensive and practical reference for those who both use and produce survey data.
"Providing a comprehensive approach to cognitive interviewing in the field of survey methodology, Cognitive Interviewing Methodology delivers a clear guide that draws upon modern, cutting-edge ...research from a variety of fields. Each chapter begins by summarizing the prevailing paradigms that currently dominate the field of cognitive interviewing. Then underlying theoretical foundations are presented, which supplies readers with the necessary background to understand newly-evolving techniques in the field. The theories lead into developed and practiced methods by leading practitioners, researchers, and/or academics. Finally, the edited guide lays out the limitations of cognitive interviewing studies and explores the benefits of cognitive interviewing with other methodological approaches."--
In the literature, two competing claims can be found on the relationship between political trust and political participation. While some authors argue that trust is a prerequisite for any form of ...participation to occur, others claim that distrust can be a motivating factor for participation in non-institutionalised forms of participation. The social movement literature suggests that political trust will only have these behavioural consequences if it is associated with sufficiently high levels of political efficacy. In this article, we rely on the results of the 2006 European Social Survey for an in-depth analysis of the relationship between political trust and participation in 25 countries. The multilevel regression shows that while political trust is positively associated with institutionalised participation, it is negatively associated with non-institutionalised participation. Moreover, the effect of political trust on institutionalised participation is dependent on self-confidence about one's capability to understand politics.
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