How to Conduct Your Own Survey

by Priscilla Salant, Don A. Dillman

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

Genres: Research Methods, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 27, 1994

Reviews

[CTEP]

One thing I have been working on a lot is the SMTLC and now the broadband/Community Technology Survey, so this book is very relevant to my service right now. While some of the material, such as sampling techniques really don’t apply to this survey do to funding and logistical constraints, it is very useful for question design, question order (though not very applicable really either) and analyzing results.

3. Why should other corps members read or not read this book?

Well, if you are doing a survey, it is written by one of the acknowledged masters in the field. Also, it is targeted towards organizations and decision makers who are not survey experts to give them an idea of what can be done on their own and when you need professional assistance. The language is not over the top, but not too simplified, and some of it is surprisingly interesting, especially some of the psychological bits regarding question order and design. But as it is a technical book, I wouldn't recommend it for causal reading.

[Fazal]

How to Conduct Your Own Survey

[Bucket · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is simple how-to manual about conducting a survey. It covers each steps, from deciding what kind of survey you need and what you need to find out, to building the questionairre, to coding, analyzing, and reporting the data. The book is also full of examples of real survey situations - some examples of how to do it right, and some examples of how it went wrong.

Considering this was published in 1994, I found it quite useful. There are dated bits, like when it talks about whether or not to use a computer for coding data, when it describes the software options available, and when it talks about the monetary costs of conducting a survey, but I just skimmed through these parts. Most useful here are the real-life examples of how to determine what kind of survey you need, how to code and analyze all sorts of question types, and what really goes into creating good, unbiased questions that will inspire interest and accuracy from respondents.

Themes: survey research, practical manual. business, public opinion, textbook

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dillman's "total design method" is well illustrated in this volume. This work is an accessible introduction to designing one's own survey. The book is written pretty well, too.

Trying to get accurate results is what survey design is all about. This book emphasizes that and then runs through the process, step-by-step.

The book deals with some of the key issues in survey design: (a) what type of survey method (face-to-face, mail, phone), (b) sample selection, (c) construction of questions and the total questionnaire, (d) the logistics of administering the survey, (e) data analysis, (f) reporting the results.

The work concludes with a title that says it all: "Advice, Resources, and Maintaining Perspective."

All in all, a useful and accessible introduction to survey research and how to minimize errors.