Preparing to conduct a survey

Preparing to conduct a survey

1. Surveys

   • Interviews
   • Written questionnaires

2. Open ended questions do not limit the answer

   • Allow for validity

3. Closed ended questions limit the answer

   • Allow for reliability

4. Choose a topic

   • Formulate an aim - what you want to study and what you hope to find as a result
     • Formulate a hypothesis - a predication of what you will find
       • Gives direction to the study

5. Operationalising concepts

   • Clearly defining key terms and concepts
     • E.g. social class can be defined by income, land owned, occupation etc so one specific definition would have to be used
   • Before research occurs, sociological ideas must be defined in such a way that they can be measured
     • The process of converting a concept into something that can be measured is called operationalisation

6. The Pilot study

   • Trial version of questionnaire
     • Irons out any problems
   • Y&W did over 100 trial interviews

7. Sampling

   • Aims to produce generalisation so those in the sample are representative of the wider population
   • A smaller sub-group drawn from the wider group that we are interested in
   • The sampling frame
     • A list of members of the population we are interested in
     • Select sample from sampling frame
   • Sampling techiques
     • Random sampling: numbers allocated and picked at random
     • Quasi-random sampling: every nth name on list selected
     • Stratified sampling: dividing population into strata and picking from them
     • Quota sampling: researchers go out looking for a number (the quota) of each person they need
     • Not all are representative due to practical and theoretical problems
     • Practical problems
       • Social characteristics (gender, class etc) of whole population cannot be known
       • Impossible to find/create sampling frame for some research i.e. not all criminals convicted
         • Snowballl sampling used: involves poeple contacting others who may get involved
       • People may refuse

8. Interpretivists believe a representative sample is not as important as they focus on validity

9. Positivists aims are to collect reliable data