Surveys work best when asking
structured questions. Structure refers to the degree of control you want to
exercise over the answers you will get. The questions may be either completely
unstructured and vague or highly structured. The more structured the questions,
the more participants are constrained to your predetermined answers. Therefore,
you may be limiting their responses; they may have other things to say. On the
other hand, having broad and exploratory questions as in interviews, may not be
the best choice for surveys, as the data may unable to be summarized.
Sometimes surveys are an unwise
choice because respondents may find it difficult to answer accurately or
truthfully. Perhaps the information you seek is hard to remember or too
sensitive for people to be willing to reveal it to a stranger. It is often
assumed that social desirability biases much survey research, meaning that
respondents may answer questions to reflect what they think is socially
appropriate rather than what they really believe or do. Racial beliefs and
attitudes provide an example of this. In the second half of the 20th
century, the number of people answering national surveys in ways indicating
they held a racial prejudice dropped rapidly compared to earlier surveys.
Whether people were less prejudiced in the 1990s than in the 1950s is
uncertain. However, it is clear that the behavior of respondents on the same
survey questions dramatically changed.
Next time we will continue our discussion
of surveys. Do you have an issue or a question
that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a
guest writer? Send me your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu
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