The big picture of survey research

Survey research allows researchers to collect data by way of asking questions. It can be done via many different mediums, including the internet or telephone, or in persons by reading and recording answers (Groves et al., 2011). Therefore, a survey allows for data to be gathered from a sample of entities using a systematic method for the purposes of analyzing data and applying it to a larger population of the same entities (Groves et al., 2011). For instance, surveying college students at one university and applying that data to a larger body of college students within that state or country.

Historically, surveys have been used by governments to for the census (Groves et al., 2011). These were efforts used in order to account for the entire population and not just a subset of a population. The census allows for governments to recognize groups and determine where public funding should be provided, as well as allowing those groups to get political clout. In the United States, the census must be done every 10 years, which differs from Canada which conducts a national census every five years. Nowadays, surveys are utilized across all fields and have an important role in market research and journalism (Groves et al., 2011).

In journalism, every time it is time for an election, surveys go out to gauge the public’s opinion on a particular presidential candidate. News and media use this information to form the basis of their news stories on the state of the public’s mood about a candidate. These surveys can be in the form of questionnaires, interviews, or surveys to get information on how they, as a member of the public, feel about a candidate’s policies, their popularity, or their track record for those who have served in a public position such as a senator or governor.

One of the benefits of utilizing surveys, is that doing so is not as cost prohibitive as other forms of data collection (Groves et al., 2011). Utilizing surveys allows researchers to collect a lot of information from a large group of people without having to visit each person or group of people individually. For example, during a project I was working on for the National Institutes of Environmental Health Services, I worked with a scientist to collect data for myositis. Due to the fact that there were hundreds of doctors and they were located all over the world, it was in the best interest of the researcher to employ surveys to collect data. This kept the researcher and her team from having to travel to each country, which could easily have cost thousands of dollars. The collecting of the myositis data via surveys was a reliable method to collect data as well. It allowed the researcher to ask for feedback on questions that were medical in nature from a large sample size and still remain relatively low in cost (Groves et al., 2011). Therefore, surveys provide a cost effective way to collect data.

Although surveys have the benefits, they also have their drawbacks as well. In contrast to the cost savings of doing surveys, for social psychologists they can be more expensive than laboratory experimentation, and often more time-consuming (Groves et al., 2011). Though surveys allow researchers to collect data from a large population and can be generalized, surveys are typically inflexible. Any numbers of questions may be asked with a survey, but unfortunately there is only a single instrument for collecting the data. Likewise, questions can be confusing to a subset of a population if they are phrased a certain way. By the time this happens, it is usually too late to re-do the survey. Accounting for understanding or a lack thereof can be difficult and doesn’t lend itself to correction when using a large population from which data has been collected.

An example of a drawback is the United States Census. Over the years, the census has not accounted for the different groups of citizens that live in the United States. At one point in time, anyone who was of African descent was listed as either Negro or Mulatto. For Arab Americans, the classification was even trickier. People from the Middle East and North African (MENA) regions have typically been told to list themselves as being “White”, even for those who are darker skinned. However, this does not provide accurate information when it comes to government funding for marginalized groups. It is known that there is a large number of Arab Americans within the United States, but the census is unable to give numbers. For the first time in history, the United States Census will have designations for people from the MENA region. The down side to this is that there is no accounting for past census records. Once the data has been collected, it is either difficult or impossible to go back and correct it.

There are two main types of questions that can be addressed in survey research: closed-ended questions and open-ended questions (Bradburn, Sudman, & Wansink, 2004). Open-ended questions allow for subjects to answer questions in their own words; whereas closed-ended questions allow for a researcher to collect data using a Likert-type scale (Bradburn et al., 2004). In this way, data is easier to count the frequency of each response, whereas open-ended questions do not allow for that.

One question that I am interested in studying is what role does religiosity play in newlywed Muslim couples. Muslims are encouraged to get married for religious reasons and in the United States, these marriages tend to end in divorce. Understanding the attitudes related to marriage, divorce, and commitment may help me as a researcher understand why these marriages tend to fail within the American Muslim community. Other studies have shown that religiosity has a positive impact on couples where there was a lack of neuroticism in the husband, and a negative impact when it existed (Sullivan, 2001).

Since the Muslim community differs from other communities throughout the United States, it is important to gauge the attitudes of that community specifically. One of the criticisms of other research is that it cannot be generalized to all communities or religious beliefs because of how beliefs and culture differ from group to group. As such, there are also limitations to this study due to the many different cultures involved as well and sub-sects of this particular religion. However, using a survey may help to understand the nuances of marriage and divorce within this particular community within the United States.

A survey could be employed to collect demographic information, marriage quality, and personality. From there, I can get information on how often a couple attends religious services, how important religious and spiritual beliefs are, and understanding what role religion or spirituality has within day-to-day life. These items could be measured on a Likert scale. Utilizing a survey in this way allows for the generalization of information (Groves et al., 2011). Doing so this way is reliable and tends to be versatile as well. This will allow for me as a researcher to gain a representative picture of the characteristics and attitude of a large group without having to ask the questions to everyone within that group (Groves et al., 2011).

References

• Bradburn, N. M., Sudman, S., & Wansink, B. (2004). Asking questions. John Wiley & Sons. ↩1 ↩2
• Groves, R. M., Floyd J Fowler, J., Couper, M. P., Lepkowski, J. M., Singer, E., & Tourangeau, R. (2011). Survey methodology (2nd ed.). John Wiley & Sons. ↩1 ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9
• Sullivan, K. T. (2001). Understanding the relationship between religiosity and marriage: An investigation of the immediate and longitudinal effects of religiosity on newlywed couples. Journal of Family Psychology, 15(4), 610–626. ↩