Survey Research Center National Elections Study

1-r Philip Converse, asst. study director, Warren E. Miller research associate, Angus Campbell, dir.

Survey Research Center National Elections Study

l-r: Philip Converse, asst. study director, Warren E. Miller research associate, Angus Campbell, dir.

Survey Research Center National Elections Study

l-r; Philip Converse, asst. study director, Warren E. Miller research associate, Angus Campbell, dir.

Health survey research methods : third biennial conference.

Mode of access: Internet.

Location decisions and industrial mobility in Michigan, 1961; a sample survey of Michigan and Ohio manufacturers conducted by the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan.

Bibliographical footnotes.

The travel market, 1959-60; a study of the factors affecting the choice of mode of travel among American adults, based on a survey conducted by the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan,

Sponsors of the study: Boeing Airplane Company and others.

Best practice business to business survey: research recruitment for the MCM

This is a Report on research which investigated methods to encourage business compliance with requests from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to participate in a business survey relating the Management Capabilities.

Research in statistical education — planning of an international survey

As announced in the November 2000 issue of MathStats&OR [1], one of the projects supported by the Maths, Stats & OR Network funds is an international survey of research into pedagogic issues in statistics and OR. I am taking the lead on this and report here on the progress that has been made during the first year. A paper giving some background to the project and describing initial thinking on how it might be implemented was presented at the 53rd session of the International Statistical Institute in Seoul, Korea, in August 2001 in a session on The future of statistics education research [2]. It sounded easy. I considered that I was something of an expert on surveys having lectured on the topic for many years and having helped students and others who were doing surveys, particularly with the design of their questionnaires. Surely all I had to do was to draft a few questions, send them electronically to colleagues in statistical education who would be only to happy to respond, and summarise their responses? I should have learnt from my experience of advising all those students who thought that doing a survey was easy and to whom I had to explain that their ideas were too ambitious. There are several inter-related stages in survey research and it is important to think about these before rushing into the collection of data. In the case of the survey in question, this planning stage revealed several challenges. Surveys are usually done for a purpose so even before planning how to do them, it is advisable to think about the final product and the dissemination of results. This is the route I followed.

A case study of the effectiveness of the electronic survey as a research tool for measuring students' experience of e-learning

This paper uses a case study approach to consider the effectiveness of the electronic survey as a research tool to measure the learner voice about experiences of e-learning in a particular institutional case. Two large scale electronic surveys were carried out for the Student Experience of e-Learning (SEEL) project at the University of Greenwich in 2007 and 2008, funded by the UK Higher Education Academy (HEA). The paper considers this case to argue that, although the electronic web-based survey is a convenient method of quantitative and qualitative data collection, enabling higher education institutions swiftly to capture multiple views of large numbers of students regarding experiences of e-learning, for more robust analysis, electronic survey research is best combined with other methods of in-depth qualitative data collection. The advantages and disadvantages of the electronic survey as a research method to capture student experiences of e-learning are the focus of analysis in this short paper, which reports an overview of large-scale data collection (1,000+ responses) from two electronic surveys administered to students using surveymonkey as a web-based survey tool as part of the SEEL research project. Advantages of web-based electronic survey design include flexibility, ease of design, high degree of designer control, convenience, low costs, data security, ease of access and guarantee of confidentiality combined with researcher ability to identify users through email addresses. Disadvantages of electronic survey design include the self-selecting nature of web-enabled respondent participation, which tends to skew data collection towards students who respond effectively to email invitations. The relative inadequacy of electronic surveys to capture in-depth qualitative views of students is discussed with regard to prior recommendations from the JISC-funded Learners' Experiences of e-Learning (LEX) project, in consideration of the results from SEEL in-depth interviews with students. The paper considers the literature on web-based and email electronic survey design, summing up the relative advantages and disadvantages of electronic surveys as a tool for student experience of e-learning research. The paper concludes with a range of recommendations for designing future electronic surveys to capture the learner voice on e-learning, contributing to evidence-based learning technology research development in higher education.

The Australian Business Assessment of Computer User Security (ABACUS): A national survey.

The Australian Business Assessment of Computer User Security (ABACUS) survey is a nationwide assessment of the prevalence and nature of computer security incidents experienced by Australian businesses. This report presents the findings of the survey which may be used by businesses in Australia to assess the effectiveness of their information technology security measures.

Doctors’ perspectives on law and life-sustaining treatment: Survey design and recruitment strategies for a challenging cohort

- Background Palliative medicine and other specialists play significant legal roles in decisions to withhold and withdraw life-sustaining treatment at the end of life. Yet little is known about their knowledge of or attitudes to the law, and the role they think it should play in medical practice. Consideration of doctors’ views is critical to optimizing patient outcomes at the end of life. However, doctors are difficult to engage as participants in empirical research, presenting challenges for researchers seeking to understand doctors’ experiences and perspectives. - Aims To determine how to engage doctors involved in end-of-life care in empirical research about knowledge of the law and the role it plays in medical practice at the end of life. - Methods Postal survey of all specialists in palliative medicine, emergency medicine, geriatric medicine, intensive care, medical oncology, renal medicine, and respiratory medicine in three Australian states: New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland. The survey was sent in hard copy with two reminders and a follow up reminder letter was also sent to the directors of hospital emergency departments. Awareness was further promoted through engagement with the relevant medical colleges and publications in professional journals; various incentives to respond were also used. The key measure is the response rate of doctors to the survey. - Results Thirty-two percent of doctors in the main study completed their survey with response rate by specialty ranging from 52% (palliative care) to 24% (medical oncology). This overall response rate was twice that of the reweighted pilot study (16%). - Conclusions Doctors remain a difficult cohort to engage in survey research but strategic recruitment efforts can be effective in increasing response rate. Collaboration with doctors and their professional bodies in both the development of the survey instrument and recruitment of participants is essential.

Report on Lake Wamala fisheries catch assessment survey 2012

Lake Wamala is one of the small lakes in Uganda, and lies between latitudes 0o 15; and 0o 25' N 31o 45' to longitude 32o 00' E, longitude and at an altitude of 1000m above sea level. Following ths 1961 heavy rains the lake expanded from about 100 to 118 sq. km and the swamps covered almost 60 sq km (Okaranon 1993). This lake was first stocked with Oreohromis niloticus eduardianus populary known as Oreohromis niloticus then Oreochromis leucostictus and then Tilapia zillii then after that it was officially opened for commercial fishing in 1960. Despite of the commercial fishery there used to be subsistance fishing that was mainly by the use of wires and hooks and targeted the Clarias and Protopterus species. The lake fishery used to be highly profitable after the opening in 1960; though in 1970s the fishers started complaining of the declining state of the fishery. At that time the O. niloticus had gone down to less than 1 kg per net per night by 1975 (Okaranon 1993). Due to it led to scientists undertake fisheries surveys in 1975/78 and later 1988/92 then later on there subsquent survey in 2003. Since that time there has been no work done until March 2012 that both catch assessment and frame surveys undertaken to ensure that management issues are addressed concerning this riparian water body. The main objectives of the survey were:- To assess fish production levels in the commercial fisheries of Lake Wamala (Catch Assessment). To assess the fishing effort and facilities available at the fish landings that supports the fisher folks.

Measuring design investment in firms: Conceptual foundations and exploratory UK survey

The importance of design to company and national performance has been widely discussed, with a number of studies investigating the value or impact of design on performance. However, none of these studies has measured design investment as an input against which performance can be compared. As yet, there is no established way in which design investment might be measured. Without such a method, we cannot develop a reliable picture, akin to that for R&D spending, on the impact of design spending on company performance. This paper presents a conceptual framework for the measurement of design investment and applies this framework in a survey of UK firms. The framework describes design as being part of the creation and commercialization of new products and services. The survey highlights some surprising patterns of design spend in the reported sample and demonstrates the viability of the underpinning framework. A revised framework is proposed that situates design investment in the context of R&D. The model has implications for policy makers trying to understand the role and scale of design in the private sector, for managers wishing to optimize their design investments and for academics seeking to measure the value of design. © 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V.

The Development of a Holistic and Quantitative Tool for the Assessment and Improvement of Survey Quality.

There are a variety of guidelines and methods available to measure and assess survey quality. Most of these are based on qualitative descriptions. In practice, they are not easy to implement and it is very difficult to make comparisons between surveys. Hence there is a theoretical and pragmatic demand to develop a mainly quantitative based survey assessment tool. This research aimed to meet this need and make contributions to the evaluation and improvement of survey quality. Acknowledging the critical importance of measurement issues in survey research, this thesis starts with a comprehensive introduction to measurement theory and identifies the types of measurement errors associated with measurement procedures through three experiments. Then it moves on to describe concepts, guidelines and methods available for measuring and assessing survey quality. Combining these with measurement principles leads to the development of a quantitative based statistical holistic tool to measure and assess survey quality. The criteria, weights and subweights for the assessment tool are determined using Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) and a survey questionnaire based on the Delphi method. Finally the model is applied to a database of surveys which was constructed to develop methods of classification, assessment and improvement of survey quality. The model developed in this thesis enables survey researchers and/or commissioners to make a holistic assessment of the value of the particular survey(s). This model is an Excel based audit which takes a holistic approach, following all stages of the survey from inception, to design, construction, execution, analysis and dissemination. At each stage a set of criteria are applied to assess quality. Scores attained against these assessments are weighted by the importance of the criteria and summed to give an overall assessment of the stage. The total score for a survey can be obtained by a combination of the scores for every stage weighted again by the importance of each stage. The advantage of this is to construct a means of survey assessment which can be used in a diagnostic manner to assess and improve survey quality.