Survey Design?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

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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