SURVEY RESEARCH

 

SURVEY

 

•     the process of looking at something in its entirety

•     scrutinizes the complete scope of something

•     empirical study that uses questionnaires or interviews to discover descriptive       characteristics of phenomena (quantitative research)

•     can add intriguing information to our store of knowledge

 

BRIEF HISTORY

 

Surveys are a very old research technique. In the Old Testament, for example, we find the following:

After the plague the Lord said to Moses and to Eleazar the son of Aaron, the priest, “Take a census of all the congregation of the people of Israel, from twenty old and upward.” (Numbers 26:1-2)

Ancient Egyptian rules conducted censuses to help them administer their domains. Jesus was born away from home because Joseph and Mary were journeying to Joseph’s ancestral home for a Roman census.

 

A little-known survey was attempted among French workers in 1880. A German political sociologist mailed some 25,000 questionnaires to workers to determine the extent of their exploitation by employers. The rather lengthy questionnaire included items such as these:

 

Does your employer or his representative resort to trickery in order to defraud you of a part of your earnings?

 

If you are paid piece rates, is the quality of the article made a pretext for fraudulent deductions from your wages?

 

The survey researcher in this case was not George Gallup but Karl Marx ([1880] 1956: 208). Though 25, 000 questionnaires were mailed out, there is no record of any being returned.

 

Today, survey research is a frequently used mode of observation in the social sciences. In a typical survey, the researcher selects a sample of respondents and administers a standardized questionnaire to each person in the sample. 

 

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