Types of Research: Learn It 4—Surveys

Surveys

Often, psychologists develop surveys as a means of gathering data.

survey

Surveys are lists of questions to be answered by research participants, and can be delivered as paper-and-pencil questionnaires, administered electronically, or conducted verbally. Generally, the survey itself can be completed in a short time, and the ease of administering a survey makes it easy to collect data from a large number of people. You have probably even participated in some already—oftentimes surveys are given by retailers after a customer experience to learn more about reactions to a product or a service.

A sample online survey reads, “Dear visitor, your opinion is important to us. We would like to invite you to participate in a short survey to gather your opinions and feedback on your news consumption habits. The survey will take approximately 10-15 minutes. Simply click the “Yes” button below to launch the survey. Would you like to participate?” Two buttons are labeled “yes” and “no.”
Figure 1. Surveys can be administered in a number of ways, including electronically administered research, like the survey shown here. (credit: Robert Nyman)

Surveys are a tool commonly used for descriptive research that involve collecting data from a sample of individuals, however, they can also be used for correlational research to examine the relationship between variables or even in experiments to gather information about participants. For example, a survey might be used to examine the relationship between age and voting behavior.

Surveys allow researchers to gather data from larger samples than may be afforded by other research methods. A sample is a subset of individuals selected from a population, which is the overall group of individuals that the researchers are interested in.

Researchers study the sample and seek to generalize their findings to the population. Generally, researchers will begin this process by calculating various measures of central tendency from the data they have collected. These measures provide an overall summary of what a typical response looks like.

Pros and Cons of Surveys

There are both strengths and weaknesses to using surveys in comparison to case studies. By using surveys, we can collect information from a large sample of people. A larger sample is better able to reflect the actual diversity of the population, thus allowing better generalizability. Therefore, if our sample is sufficiently large and diverse, we can assume that the data we collect from the survey can be generalized to the larger population with more certainty than the information collected through a case study. However, given the greater number of people involved, we are not able to collect the same depth of information on each person that would be collected in a case study.

Another potential weakness of surveys is that people don’t always give accurate responses. They may lie, misremember, or answer questions in a way that they think makes them look good. For example, people may report drinking less alcohol than is actually the case.