Strengths and Challenges of Surveys

Brief Description
“Age Question on Survey” by aafromaa is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Surveys consist of a series of questions on a topic are delivered to numerous respondents. They can be delivered in person, by phone, online, or on paper.

For more on surveys and survey design you can jump ahead to Chapter 3: Collecting data – Surveys.

Strengths:
  • Can reach a large number of people.
  • Can enable both quantitative and qualitative analysis through closed- and open- ended questioning.
Challenges:
  • Response rates may be low.
  • Open-ended questions will not elicit the degree of detail compared to other methods.

Tips from the Professor: Surveys are best used in conjunction with other approaches. Surveys can give you great quantitative data that can help you to generalize more in-depth quantitative data that you collect from other approaches.

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