Survey Design?

Subject: Survey Design?
From: Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>
To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>, Eric Thomas <ethomas -at- ftdi -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 12:49:01 -0400

Eric Thomas wondered: <<... if any of you have come across any
references (books or Web sites) that are particularly good resources
on survey design?>>

There are a great many of them, and I haven't kept up in this field
well enough to recommend anything current. Any recent textbook on
qualitative research in the social sciences (check your library)
should provide good advice on this subject. There's a decent
"priomer" article that I can recommend by Robert Schafer in the
April 2007 issue of _Intercom_. If you're not an STC member, try
contacting the author directly (robert -dot- schafer -at- ttu -dot- edu) or getting a
copy from your library.

The following might also be helpful: http://www.geoff-hart.com/
resources/1995-1998/negative.htm
(Also includes a decent book on question design that may have since
been updated.)

Probably the biggest piece of advice I can give you (precisely
because it's so often-ignored by self-appointed survey experts) is to
validate the survey questions: Edit the hell out of 'em to make 'em
as good as you can, then find a smartass who is particularly skillful
at misinterpreting questions, ask them to answer your survey
questions, and test whether the results give you anything you can
actually act on. Editors and smartasses (the categories overlap, as
in my case <g>) can both tell you when a question can be interpreted
in two or more ways, and how to fix it.


----------------------------------------------------
-- Geoff Hart
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
www.geoff-hart.com
--------------------------------------------------
Coming soon: _Effective onscreen editing_ (http://www.geoff-hart.com/
home/onscreen-book.htm)

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Survey Design?: From: Eric Thomas

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