Planning the Survey: The Hierarchy of Decisions - The stages of a survey

7 important questions on Planning the Survey: The Hierarchy of Decisions - The stages of a survey

What are the five general stages in the development and completion of a survey?

1. Overall survey design and preliminary planning.
2. Questionnaire design and pretesting.
3. Final survey design and planning.
4. Sample selection and data collection.
5. Data coding, data file construction, analysis, and final report.

What is a sampling frame?

The source (or sources) that identifies members of the population for purposes of possible selection.

What is stage 2 in the development and completion of a survey?

Develop our questionnaire, plan interviewing resources, and test our procedures to see how well the process is working.
a. Drafting the questionnaire.
b. Using intervierwers.
c. Debriefing interviewers.
d. Deciding on pretest methods; in the early phases, the purpose of pretesting is to get feedback on individual questionnaire items. In the later phases, the purpose is to test the entire questionnaire and the survey procedures. Two often used methods are cognitive interviewing and focus groups.
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What is stage 3 in the development and completion of a survey?

During this stage, final changes should be made in the sampling plan, the questionnaire, interviewer-training procedures and materials, data-coding plans, and plans for analyzing the data.

What is stage 4 in the development and completion of a survey?

During this stage, we select the sample of respondents to be contacted and we administer the interviews. Troughout this stage, we need to monitor the results of the sampling and data collection activities and begin coding and data file preparation.

What is responsive survey design?

An alternative approach to survey development, that permits modification of some features of the survey protocal as information from the actual survey becomes available. Responsive designs make use of information gathered during a specified time period at the beginning of a survey, when the sample frame and design, the data collection mode, recruitment procedures, and measurement processess are all operational. This early phase information is used to model survey protocol modifications that can improve the quiality of key statistics per unit cost. A method for using paradata about data collection results to modify survey procedures.

What are two general lessons illustrated by issues responsive survey design addresses?

1. The relationship between survey procedures, costs, and error is complex; there may be many options for improving overal efficiency.
2. Later modifications of the key aspects of a survey plan are infeasible for many surveys (and may actually introduce errors and problems).

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