Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Objectives Upon successful completion of this subject, students should be able to identify issues worth surveying; construct effective questionnaires and interview schedules; choose appropriate samples using any of a variety of sampling methods; analyse survey data, presenting results in terms of frequencies, percentages, crosstabulations and graphical representations; and assess the reliability, validity and dimensionality of measurement scales included in their instruments. Students should be sensitive to the ethical issues raised by surveys, and be able to identify and critically analyse reports of surveys from the literature.
Synopsis This subject provides a broad overview of the use of surveys to describe social situations, such as those that occur in education and the health sciences and particularly in evaluation studies, and a range of practical skills that are useful in survey research. The characteristics of surveys and censuses will be examined and contrasted with those of experimental and case study methods, clarifying the assumptions that survey research makes about the subjects of investigation. Students will learn to apply various methods of sampling and to estimate the magnitude of the sampling error associated with several simple designs. The use and development of measurement scales will be outlined, and students will learn methods of analysing scale data to study its reliability, validity and dimensionality. Practice will be provided in the construction and administration of questionnaires and interview schedules, the preparation of data for analysis, and the use of appropriate computer software for processing survey data. Students will be required to critically review examples of published survey research, and to consider the social and ethical issues raised by the assumptions and methods of survey research.
Assessment Written: 100%