COM 470 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Money-B, General Social Survey
Document Summary
Comparison of the different survey methods: self-administered questionnaires, cheaper and faster than face-to-face interviews, national is the same cost as local mailings, requires small staff, more willingness to answer controversial items. Interview surveys: fewer incomplete questionnaires, more effective for complicated questionnaires, face-to-face is more intimate, telephone surveys, cheaper and more time efficient, online surveys, available software and websites. Strengths of survey research: strengths, useful in describing large populations, make large samples possible, surveys are flexible, standardized questions. Weakness of survey research: weaknesses, round pegs in square holes, seldom deal with context of social life. Inflexible: artificial, weak on validity (but strong on reliability) Lack of validity = subjective interpretation: they are somewhat static interpretations of what is going on, e. g. Welsh 2: secondary analysis: a form of research in which the data collected and processed by one researcher are reanalyzed by another, e. g.
