Thomas Edison State University Advantages and Disadvantages to Survey Research Discussion Open and read uploaded fileBasically you will answer both questio

Thomas Edison State University Advantages and Disadvantages to Survey Research Discussion Open and read uploaded fileBasically you will answer both questions completely. You may use an outside source, yet you must use one or more of the articles given provided in the uploaded file when answering both questions. Please cite APA in text citation properly for both questions and absolutely no plagiarism. Class: Health psychology- This week discussion is on: Survey Research
Please answer both questions EACH in 150 words or more. Both must be answered completely.
You can use an outside scholarly source, but you still must use one or more of the articles
given below when answering both questions. Please cite APA in text citation properly for both
questions and absolutely no plagiarism.
1. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages to survey research? Choose one of the
disadvantages that you discussed and explain ways that this disadvantage could be
addressed.
2. Why is survey research so commonly used in health psychology? Find an example of
a survey used in a health psychology program or research study and describe some
of the questions that it includes? How could this survey be improved? Make sure to
cite the source of the survey you used.
Articles are here below, you can locate these resources over the internet. Please remember you
can use an outside scholarly (no books please) source. However, you must still locate and use
one or more of the articles given below when answering both questions.
? Sturgis Ph.D., P. (Academic). (2015). An introduction to survey research method.
Retrieved from SAGE Research Methods. (you can this reading in the additional
uploaded file)
? Read Designing Surveys, by Czaja & Blair (Eds.), from Sage Publications Company.
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=laQgAQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&ot
s=zSKzd-Q_kr&sig=p0B2XL2qtCHZcVH5cAEaDmZaD10#v=onepage&q&f=false
Reading: An Introduction to Survey Research Methods
Sturgis Ph.D., P. (Academic). (2015). An introduction to survey research method. Retrieved from
SAGE Research Methods.
Hi, I’m Patrick Sturgis, and I’m Professor of Research Methods at the University of
Southampton. Survey methods is the study of populations by means of drawing samples from
populations.
And populations can be very broadly defined. We tend to think of populations in terms of the
population of people in a country, but it could be the population of fish in the sea, population
of trees in a wood, pebbles on a beach, anything. But the big key principle is that we can draw
smaller subgroups from the total population, which are then easier and more cost-effective to
you measure. And we can then make what we call inferences. We can talk about the
characteristics of the whole population just on the basis of this smaller sample. So that’s the
kind of the key idea behind survey research. And the history of survey research goes back a long
way. If you think of the Bible, Jesus was on his way, in his mother’s tummy, to be measured as
part of a census. So if you like the idea of measuring populations systematically counting– and
usually for the purposes of taxation– goes back a long, long way, even before the time of Jesus.
But the more modern– how we think of surveys in the modern era probably can be traced to
the sort of mid-late 19th century, when a lot of people were becoming interested, for a variety
of reasons, in issues of poverty and equality and so on.
There was a lot of concern with the situation of the working classes– particular in Britain,
actually. And there were people like Charles Booth, Seebohm Rowntree, who were kind of
dissatisfied with what you’d kind of think of as anecdotes about the poor and so on. And so
what Booth, in particular, set out to do was to go out and actually make systematic
measurements on whole tracts of London. And this is what he did. He sent out interviewers to
knock on doors, ask people questions, and then recall this all systematically and produce these
wonderful maps that you can still see in the British Library, political, economic, science. So
these are kind of the pioneers, started systematically measuring things that characterized
populations.
And then, following that sort of early development, there was growing interest– again, now
moving over to the US particularly– in measuring audience perceptions of radio shows, of TV
shows, cinema, and so on. Because, of course, there’s an advertising premium for getting
audiences, getting particularly wealthy audiences, and so on.
So this became more and more important to understand who was listening and what they’re
paying attention to– and so development further of polling methods. And this– in the early
days– was quite rudimentary in terms of how we would do surveys now. But the– probably one
of the most important developments was by a chap called George Gallup, who still has a polling
company named after him now.
And he very famously got the election forecast right in the 1936, presidential election between
the Landon and Roosevelt, where a very successful, at the time, magazine, called The Literary
Digest had 13 million readers, and it sent out cards asking them to say who they were going to
vote for. And they called the election heavily in favor of Landon. And Gallop, using a more
systematic method of drawing a small sample, but one which kind of closely matches the
population, called it for Roosevelt. And the rest is history. That was a very clear, prominent
example about how it’s not so much the size of the sample, it’s how well it matches the
population.
And so those were some of the key early developments. Well, if your target population is
pebbles on the beach, it’s very easy. Because pebbles on the beach don’t say no when you pick
them up– well, not in my experience, anyway. But where it’s much harder is in the real world,
when your sample is of human beings, and they’re busy, they’re not in, they’ve got better
things to do.
And so you do not get everyone who should be in the sample to give you an interview. So
nonresponse is there a particular threat to being able to make accurate inferences. I actually
am quite an advocate of not rushing into doing your own data collection as the first thing that
you do, because I think you can learn a lot about how to do surveys, how not to do surveys, by
looking at surveys that have already been done and done to a high quality.
So I think that’s one of the things that I would advise students to do who are interested in doing
survey research would be, rather than rushing out– as I often see students do, sort of write the
questionnaire and send it out as quickly as possible– is to spend time working with an existing
survey, looking at the documentation. And it might sound a little boring, but it’s certainly good
preparation if you are going to go and do your own data collection.
So what kind of surveys would you suggest people take a look at? Can you give– Well, I mean,
surveys are quite country-specific, right, in terms of how we draw samples. I was talking earlier
about drawing a random sample of people from the whole population. Now, how do you do
that? Well, in some countries you’ve got lists of every individual. You’ve got a population
register. We don’t have that in this country. We have a list of addresses that the post office puts
letters through the mailboxes of. So we need to draw our samples differently, and that tends to
be true in different countries.
So what I say is really based on what you are doing in the UK, and most of the big surveys will
be done, broadly, along the same procedures, in drawing the sample broadly in the same way.
So you could go to the UK Data Service and download a survey data set and all the
documentation, and you’d probably get it a good idea of how to do a survey to high standard.
I think, having said that, there are surveys that perhaps have more engaging content than
others. You might be more interested in something like the British Social Attitudes survey,
which asks a random sample of the British population their views about kind of contemporary
issues and questions that are kind of political controversy, like immigration and attitutes to gay
and lesbian people and so on, how that is changing over time.
So I think a lot of students, especially in social sciences, would find that particular survey quite
interesting. And, of course, many others.

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