Best Practices for Survey Research

"The quality of a survey is best judged not by its size, scope, or prominence, but by how much attention is given to [preventing, measuring and] dealing with the many important problems that can arise."--"What is a Survey?", American Statistical Association

Guidelines for producing a quality survey:

• Have specific goals.
• Consider alternatives.
• Select samples that well represent the population to be studied.
• Use designs that balance costs with errors.
• Take great care in matching question wording to the concepts being measured and the population studied.
• Pretest questionnaires and procedures.
• Train interviewers carefully on interviewing techniques and the subject matter of the survey.
• Check quality at each stage.
• Maximize cooperation or response rates within the limits of ethical treatment of human subjects.
• Use appropriate statistical analytic and reporting techniques.
• Develop and fulfill pledges of confidentiality given to respondents.
• Disclose all methods of the survey to allow for evaluation and replication.