Surveys

Almost all of us have responded to surveys of one kind or another. We may have been asked what

PART ONE ♦ THE SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

TABLE 2-1 Asking the Correct Question

POOR QUESTION

PROBLEM

BETTER QUESTION

Do you favor urban homesteading?

Did your mother ever work?

Should it be possible for a woman to obtain a legal abortion?

Do you favor making it legal for 18-year-olds to drink liquor and smoke marijuana?

Don't you think that the press is biased and that we should distrust whatever it says?

People may not understand the question.

Misleading

Too general

Double-barreled (two questions in one)

Biased question; leads people toward a particular response

Do you favor a government program which encourages families to improve inner-city housing?

Did your mother ever work for pay outside the home?

Should it be possible for a woman to obtain a legal abortion if there is a strong chance of serious defect in her baby? If she became pregnant as a result of rape?

Do you favor making it legal for 18-year-olds to drink liquor? Do you favor making it legal for 18-year-olds to smoke marijuana?

Would you say that you have a great deal of confidence, some confidence, or very little confidence in the press?

kind of detergent we use, which presidential can­didate we intend to vote for, or what our favorite television program is. A survey is a study, gener­ally in the form of an interview or questionnaire, which provides sociologists with information con­cerning how people think and act. Among our nation's best-known surveys of opinion are the Gallup poll and the Harris poll. As anyone who watches the news during presidential campaigns knows, these polls have become an important part of political life.

When you think of surveys, you may remember many "person on the street" interviews on local television news shows. While such interviews can be highly entertaining, they are not necessarily an accurate indication of public opinion. First, they reflect the opinions of only those people who appear at a certain location. Thus, such samples can be biased in favor of commuters, middle-class shoppers, or factory workers, depending on which street or area the newspeople select. Sec­ond, television interviews tend to attract outgoing people who are willing to appear on the air, while they frighten away others who may feel intimi­dated by a camera. A survey must be based on precise, representative sampling if it is to genu­inely reflect a broad range of the population.

In preparing to conduct a survey, sociologists must exercise great care in the wording of ques­tions (see Table 2-1). An effective survey question

Sociologists try to phrase questions carefully so that there will be no misunderstanding on the part of the respondents. If a question is improperly worded (or biased), the results are useless for the researchers.

must be simple and clear enough for people to understand it. It must also be specific enough so that there are no problems in interpreting the results. Even questions that are less structured (What do you think of programming on educa­tional television?) must be carefully phrased in order to solicit the type of information desired. Surveys can be indispensable sources of informa­tion, but only if the sampling is done properly and the questions are worded accurately (Ferber et al., 1980).

There are two main forms of surveys: the inter­view and the questionnaire. Each of these forms of survey research has its own advantages. An in­terviewer can obtain a high response rate because people find it more difficult to turn down a per­sonal request for an interview than to throw away a written questionnaire. In addition, a skillful in­terviewer can go beyond written questions and "probe" for a subject's underlying feelings and reasons. On the other hand, questionnaires have the advantage of being cheaper, especially when large samples are used. Also, since the questions

CHAPTER TWO ♦ METHODS OF SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

An unusual method of research is examining household waste. In the photograph, students at the University of Arizona are sorting through people's garbage for clues to family spending patterns. The students have been inoculated against tetanus and diphtheria.

are written, the researcher knows that there is some guarantee of consistency, whereas five in­terviewers can ask the same question in five dif­ferent ways.

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