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Andres 2012
Lesley Andres
Designing and Doing Survey Research
(Sage 2012)
Designing and Doing Survey Research definitely belongs on my recommended list for Survey Methods Textbooks and should certainly be on student reading lists. In it Lesley Andres has distilled more than twenty years of experience designing and running surveys, in particular the longitudinal survey Paths on Life’s Way. You can read the first chapter on-line:
Postgraduates and research managers should think of having their own copies, but libraries should have multiple copies, as it discusses survey research in the context of methodology in general. Much of the content is relevant to methodological debates covered in undergraduate courses and still raging in certain social science disciplines.
This book ranges far wider than many survey methods texts, and covers topics (interviewer training, path models, budgeting, logistics, questionnaire fonts) rarely, if ever, found in traditional methods books. It approaches survey research from a more than welcome “participatory” standpoint (those taking part in the survey are "participants", not "subjects", "informants" or "respondents"). It not only demolishes specious debates (about feminism) and arguments (qualitative vs quantitative), but also locates survey research firmly in a theoretical context, sufficient to silence even the most rabid opponents of empiricism.
The book abounds with URLs to sources and resources and contains plenty of exercises for students, some of which, unless readers have access to tutors with relevant experience, are perhaps unrealistic. It leaves the reader desperately wanting an e-book version, or at least a page on the Sage website listing all the dozens of URLs (to save all that typing from our own computers!). Perhaps the next edition will have this, and be in full (or partial) colour as many of the facsimiles and screen-shots are very difficult to read in black and gray, especially in the smaller fonts.
Dr. Andres is certainly well-versed in all the usual survey methods books, and additionally mentions "founding father" authors such as Paul Lazarsfeld, Charles Booth and Max Weber. However there is no mention of other important authors (Abrams, Rosenberg, Marsh , Hoinville and Jowell, Moser and Kalton and many others. Perhaps in the next edition?
In this context, readers' attention should be drawn to an important new book (Corti et al, 2014) about making survey data re-usable and to the End of Grant[1] reports (Waves 1 to 5) from the European Social Survey which are the best I've ever seen and should serve as a model for all major surveys in the public domain.
Some of her examples will raise eyebrows on either technical or professional grounds. Others are welcome. I take issue with her on advice to people contemplating running their own surveys and recruiting and training their own interviewers. Few of her readers will have the resources to do that: if they have, they would be well advised to consider instead using a reputable research agency (in the UK there are Natcen, GfK-NOP, Ipsos-Mori and TNS-BMRB) along with the "Bible of Survey Research" Marsden and Wright [Eds] 2010.
There are also a couple of short sections introducing SPSS (quantitative) and Atlas.ti (text) to analyse survey data, and describing recent extremely promising developments enabling communication between them. The SPSS section is entirely dependent on the Graphic User Interface (GUI) and also contains a couple of minor (typo) errors. Given my own immersion in using and teaching SPSS since 1972, I found it somewhat frustrating and disappointing. There are already other more appropriate, detailed and thorough texts (and on-line resources) for introducing SPSS. Moreover syntax is much better than mindless point-and-click for basic data management and analysis: it also makes students think.
For this reason it will not go on my highly recommended SPSS text-books list, but will be “mentioned in despatches” since statisticians, researchers and users of SPSS (or any other software) for survey analysis will greatly benefit from reading and inwardly digesting the other parts of the book.
A more detailed review will appear on my site once I’ve collated all the copious scribbles in the margins and abundant notes elsewhere (always the sign of an interesting and fascinating book).
Oh, and there some great cartoons.
Designing and Doing Survey Research
(Sage 2012)
Designing and Doing Survey Research definitely belongs on my recommended list for Survey Methods Textbooks and should certainly be on student reading lists. In it Lesley Andres has distilled more than twenty years of experience designing and running surveys, in particular the longitudinal survey Paths on Life’s Way. You can read the first chapter on-line:
Postgraduates and research managers should think of having their own copies, but libraries should have multiple copies, as it discusses survey research in the context of methodology in general. Much of the content is relevant to methodological debates covered in undergraduate courses and still raging in certain social science disciplines.
This book ranges far wider than many survey methods texts, and covers topics (interviewer training, path models, budgeting, logistics, questionnaire fonts) rarely, if ever, found in traditional methods books. It approaches survey research from a more than welcome “participatory” standpoint (those taking part in the survey are "participants", not "subjects", "informants" or "respondents"). It not only demolishes specious debates (about feminism) and arguments (qualitative vs quantitative), but also locates survey research firmly in a theoretical context, sufficient to silence even the most rabid opponents of empiricism.
The book abounds with URLs to sources and resources and contains plenty of exercises for students, some of which, unless readers have access to tutors with relevant experience, are perhaps unrealistic. It leaves the reader desperately wanting an e-book version, or at least a page on the Sage website listing all the dozens of URLs (to save all that typing from our own computers!). Perhaps the next edition will have this, and be in full (or partial) colour as many of the facsimiles and screen-shots are very difficult to read in black and gray, especially in the smaller fonts.
Dr. Andres is certainly well-versed in all the usual survey methods books, and additionally mentions "founding father" authors such as Paul Lazarsfeld, Charles Booth and Max Weber. However there is no mention of other important authors (Abrams, Rosenberg, Marsh , Hoinville and Jowell, Moser and Kalton and many others. Perhaps in the next edition?
In this context, readers' attention should be drawn to an important new book (Corti et al, 2014) about making survey data re-usable and to the End of Grant[1] reports (Waves 1 to 5) from the European Social Survey which are the best I've ever seen and should serve as a model for all major surveys in the public domain.
Some of her examples will raise eyebrows on either technical or professional grounds. Others are welcome. I take issue with her on advice to people contemplating running their own surveys and recruiting and training their own interviewers. Few of her readers will have the resources to do that: if they have, they would be well advised to consider instead using a reputable research agency (in the UK there are Natcen, GfK-NOP, Ipsos-Mori and TNS-BMRB) along with the "Bible of Survey Research" Marsden and Wright [Eds] 2010.
There are also a couple of short sections introducing SPSS (quantitative) and Atlas.ti (text) to analyse survey data, and describing recent extremely promising developments enabling communication between them. The SPSS section is entirely dependent on the Graphic User Interface (GUI) and also contains a couple of minor (typo) errors. Given my own immersion in using and teaching SPSS since 1972, I found it somewhat frustrating and disappointing. There are already other more appropriate, detailed and thorough texts (and on-line resources) for introducing SPSS. Moreover syntax is much better than mindless point-and-click for basic data management and analysis: it also makes students think.
For this reason it will not go on my highly recommended SPSS text-books list, but will be “mentioned in despatches” since statisticians, researchers and users of SPSS (or any other software) for survey analysis will greatly benefit from reading and inwardly digesting the other parts of the book.
A more detailed review will appear on my site once I’ve collated all the copious scribbles in the margins and abundant notes elsewhere (always the sign of an interesting and fascinating book).
Oh, and there some great cartoons.