Designing and Doing Survey Research

Designing and Doing Survey Research is an introduction to the processes and methods of planning and conducting survey research in the real world. Taking a mixed method approach throughout, the book provides step-by-step guidance on: • Designing your research • Ethical issues • Developing your survey questions • Sampling • Budgeting, scheduling and managing your time • Administering your survey • Preparing for data analysis With a focus on the impact of new technologies, this book provides a cutting-edge look at how survey research is conducted today as well as the challenges survey researchers face. Packed full of international examples from various social science disciplines, the book is ideal for students and researchers new to survey research.

Table of Contents:
Survey Research Design Then and Now Mapping Out the Survey Research Process Conceptualizing Your Survey Research Study Survey Formats Developing Survey Questions Sampling Theory and Practice Validity and Reliability and Trustworthiness Administration of Surveys and Enhancing Response Rates Preparing for Data Analysis The Next Steps

About the Author :
Lesley Andres is a professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on the sociology of higher education, issues of inequality and access, transitions across the life course, and mixed-methods survey research design. Her most recent books are Designing and Doing Survey Research (2012) and The Making of a Generation: Children of the 1970s in Adulthood (2010, co-authored with Johanna Wyn). She is the principal investigator of the Paths on Life’s Way project, the topic of this case study.

Review :
If the two main tasks of data analysis are, as Tukey said, detective work and guidance counseling, then this book makes its author, Lesley Andres, the Agatha Christie of survey research and a sage mentor on statistical journeys toward truth, precision, interpretation, and value. Beautifully written, and filled with practical advice, Andres′ book should become required reading Stephen T. Ziliak Professor of Economics, Roosevelt University, and author of The Cult of Statistical Significance There are many things to like about Lesley Andres′ book on designing and doing survey research. The language is accessible, the scope is impressive, it covers classic and contemporary authors, it provides concrete examples to beginning researchers, and it integrates survey research into a wider research framework. But there is one thing I loved: it breaks with the tradition of thinking of the survey as a quantitative method and, by extension, qualitative and quantitative methods as belonging to different paradigms. Lesley Andres convincingly argues and shows by example that there is much more to survey research than usually covered in conventional texts on this subject. Research methods books in this vein are overdue and are part of a new generation of applied research methods texts for the social and related sciences Manfred Max Bergman Professor of Political Sociology and Methodology, University of Basel ′The basics of survey research are all here, and the exercises in each chapter will help focus the readers’ attention on the essential points.′