PSYB01H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Focus Group, Cluster Sampling, Longitudinal Study
Document Summary
Survey research employs questionnaires and interviews to ask people to provide information about themselves their attitudes and beliefs, demo- graphics (age, gender, income, marital status, and so on) and other facts, and past or intended future behaviors. In this chapter we will explore methods of designing and conducting surveys, including sampling techniques. Surveys provide us with a methodology for asking people to tell us about themselves; they have become important as society demands data about issues rather than only intuition and anecdotes. The survey method is also an important way for researchers to study relationships among variables and ways that attitudes and behaviours change over time rather than to provide answers that are directly related to the questions. When constructing questions for a survey, the first thing the researcher must do is explicitly determine the research objectives: what is it that the researcher wants to know. Questions about attitudes and beliefs focus on the ways that people evaluate and think.
