Lecture 06

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:21]Hello students, this is Dr. Rajni Misha, associate professor, department of labor information science, Banarasindu University. I am in front of you with the second module and the first lecture of this module with the topic being the survey research. So uh till now we have been dealing with the various methods of survey methods of research. The survey research is one of them which is most useful and most used method of research. It involves the use of standardized questionnaires interviews to collect data about people their preferences thoughts behaviors in a systematic manner. It was uh although survey research first surve census survey was done in Egypt ancient Egypt but in modern world it was started somewhere in 1930s and 40s by sociologist Paul Leersfeld to examine the effects of radio on political opinion formation of the United States. This method has become a very popular method for quantitative research in the field social sciences and can be used for descriptive exploratory or explanatory research. The unit of analysis among under this research is the groups organizations or diets that is pairs of organization. The comparison between the pairs of organization such as buyers and sellers are studied using service such as studies can be used to specific person from each unit as a key informment or a proxy for that unit.

[00:02:06]Well, it can be used for an organization, for persons, for a community, for individual uh of the communities etc. Consequently, such service may be the subject to respondent bias because we are collecting the data from the respondents. So it depends upon the respondents whether they answer it or not and that biasness of the respondent also crops in in into the uh data uh of the survey research. It is concerned with the present and attempts to determine the status of the phenomena under investigation.

[00:02:50]Here are some definitions given by uh scientist social scientists like AFL who says a social survey is a process by which quantitative facts are collected about the social aspects of a community composition and activities.

[00:03:08]According to Sarman, the survey is in brief a method of analysis of uh scientific and orderly form for defined purpose of given social situations or problem and population.

[00:03:25]The objectives which are used to uh carry out the survey research are direct and close contact of researcher to the phenomena under study to collect general information a basis for hypothesis formulation to explain cause and effect relationships and to know opinion and attitudes of the people.

[00:03:50]The purpose of survey research is to describe the characteristics of a population like uh characteristic of a particular demographic group, their age, gender, behavior, language, income group, their um health health problem, the nature of their health etc etc. It is also used to explore new topics or areas of research.

[00:04:18]Exploratory surveys are often used to generate hypothesis or identify potential relationships between the variables and to explain various relationships between variables. That is to know the relationship between educational attainment and income to evaluate the effectiveness of a program or intervention. For example, a survey could be used to evaluate the impact of health education program on behavior change. The it is also carried out by government when he uh when the government introduces a new scheme for the for a particular community then effectiveness of scheme can also be studied by the survey method to monitor trends or changes over time. For example, a survey could also be used to monitor changes in attitudes towards climate change, political candidates over time. So there are a long list of survey research because the survey research can be used in any form of the research like cross-sectional survey gathers data from a sample of individuals at a specific point in time providing a snapshots of the population being studied. means a particular point of time entire population is being studied that is the cross-sectional survey. Longitudinal survey gathers data from the same sample of individuals over an extended period of time allowing researchers to track changes or trends in the population being studied. For example, the population uh the behavior of the population or the educational uh attainment of the population can also be studied using this longitudinal survey panel survey.

[00:06:09]Longitudinal survey research that tracks the same sample of individuals over time typically collecting data at multiple points in time is the panel survey.

[00:06:20]Similarly, observational survey collects data through direct observation of individuals or groups often used in behavioral or social research.

[00:06:30]Correlation survey, it measures the degree of association or relationship between two or more variables often used to identify patterns or trends in data.

[00:06:42]Experimental survey involves manipulating one or more variables to observe the effect on an outcome often used to test causal hypothesis.

[00:06:53]Descriptive survey describes the characteristics or attributes of a population or phenomena often used in exploratory research or to summarize existing data. An explanatory survey when um survey is used to explain or understand the causes or mechanism behind a phenomena. It is often used in social or psychological research.

[00:07:19]Process evaluation survey. When survey is used to uh study the measure the implementation and outcome of a program or intervention often used in program evaluation or quality improvement.

[00:07:34]Diagnostic survey accesses the current state or condition of an individual or system often used in health or organizational research.

[00:07:45]Epidemiological survey studies the distribution and determination of health and disease in a population often used to identify risk factors and inform public health interventions.

[00:07:59]Impact evaluation survey. When uh the survey is used to assess the effectiveness of a program or impact of a program or intervention then it is known as the impact evaluation survey.

[00:08:14]It is used to inform policy or decision making. Customer satisfaction survey.

[00:08:21]When an organization or when a company introduces a new gazette a new product then the survey is taken uh survey is carried over out to study the impact of product service or experience often used in marketing or customer service research. Market research service. It collects the data on consumer preferences, behaviors, attitudes often used in market research or product development. And public opinion survey when survey is carried out to uh find out the opinion of public on any particular policy government has started or the belief of the population on a specific issue topic often used in political or social research.

[00:09:20]Behavioral survey measures actual behavior or actions of individuals often used in health or social research.

[00:09:28]Attitude research. Attitude survey. It measures the attitude of beliefs or opinion of individuals often used in social or psychological research.

[00:09:40]Opinion polls are preferences of a population on a specific issue or topic often used in political or media research.

[00:09:50]basically two types of uh survey methodology. One is quantitative survey, another is qualitative survey. One more uh important method has now been used that is mixed method research which uses both the qualitative and quantitative survey. Quantitative survey research when data collection is uh empirical and the number the data collected is in number. For example, the purpose is to gather empirical evidence that can be analyzed statistically to conclude a particular population or phenomena. The questioner the questions used are uh predetermined structured and often utilize open-ended questions. often utilize closedended questions so that um participants have no option except to choose either one or uh sec first or second. This approach allows for efficient data collection and analysis as well as the ability to generalize the findings to a larger population. for example, market research, social sciences, public health, other fields where numerical data is needed to make informed decisions and recommendations.

[00:11:09]In library science, we use uh we use this quantitative survey methods uh more frequently to find out the number of users, the number of footfall on a particular day in the library, the number of download by a particular user by a particular researcher or on a partic on on a particular database etc etc. So uh survey questions may be structured or unstructured. Responses to structured questions are captured using one of the following response formats.

[00:11:49]Either they they may be dichotomus responses where you uh answer is either true or false, yes or no, or agree or disagree like that. Uh nominal responses where respondents are presented with more than two unordered options such as what is your industry or employment?

[00:12:10]Manufacturing, consumer services, retail, education, healthcare, tourism and hospitality or other.

[00:12:19]Ordinal responses where respondents have more than two order option such as what is your highest level of education, high school, bachelor's degree, post-graduate degree, etc. Interval level responses where respondents are presented with a 5 point or 7 point lacquer scale, semantic differential scale or Goodman scale.

[00:12:42]Continuous responses where respondents enter a continuous ratio scale value with a meaningful zero point such as their agree age or tenure in a form.

[00:12:54]These responses generally tend to be the fill in the blanks type.

[00:13:00]Question content and wording. Responses obtained in survey research are very sensitive to the types of questions asked. Poorly framed, ambiguous questions are likely to result in meaningless responses with very little value. Dilman recommends several rules for creating a good survey questions.

[00:13:23]First clear and understandable activewise and without complicated words or jargon word worded similarly to make it easy for respondents to read and understand them. Means simple words without any jargon can be used for the questions. Double negative should be avoided and should not use words or expressions that may be interpreted differently by different respondents. that is ambiguous questions should not be asked. Words like any or just should not be included in the questions. A biased language or tone based tends to skew observed responses. Survey questions should be clearly and carefully scrutinized to avoid biased language. Questions with multiple answers should be avoided. Multiple answers mean doublebarreled question should be avoided. For example, are you satisfied with the hardware and software provided for your work? So that is an ambiguous question. Ask more specific behavioral questions. Avoid unnecessarily detailed questions that serve no specific research purpose.

[00:14:37]Avoid questions with built-in answers.

[00:14:40]Avoid imaginary questions that have uh that have imaginary answers which cannot be used for making scientific uh inferences. Often time we assume that uh subjects have the necessary information to answer a particular question while in reality they do not even uh they do not know. Even if a response is obtained these responses tend to be inaccurate given the subject's lack of knowledge about the question being asked. Another important method is qualitative survey research.

[00:15:18]When we want to know opinion the um non-numerical data subjective question are there then the resultant question question survey is the qualitative survey research to gain a deeper understanding of the experiences perceptions and attitudes of participants toward a towards a particular phenomena or topic. The qualitative survey research is being used. This approach allows for a rich and nuanced understanding of the topic being studied and can provide insights and that are difficult to capture through quantitative methods alone. They provide the very small differences, very small uh means nuanced um characteristics of the um population of the condition of the uh person. Often used in social sciences, education, psychology and other fields where a deeper understanding of human experiences and perceptions is needed to inform policy practices or theory.

[00:16:30]Characteristics of survey research.

[00:16:32]Social surveys confined to the study of specific current problem of society that is poverty, unemployment etc. A survey research is planned to collect data for the prediction of relationship between the variables. It is concerned with a large or widely dispersed group of people contrasted with the lab experiments. Under this method, observation, interviews, attitude scales, projective techniques, smallcale experiments, etc. are used to collect data. The fact that collected here may form the basis of further social research.

[00:17:13]Data analysis method. There are number of data analysis methods involved in the uh survey research. Uh some of them are descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, factor analysis, cluster analysis, structural equation modeling, content analysis, and text mining.

[00:17:35]Descriptive statistics used to summarize and describe the top basic features of the survey data such as the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation. These statistics can help researchers understand the distribution of responses and identify any trends or patterns. Inferential statistics used to make inferences about the larger population based on the data collected in the survey. Common inferial statistics uh including hypothesis testing, regression analysis and correlation analysis. Factor analysis. Another important uh method in the survey research is the factor analysis. Uh identifying the underlying factors or dimensions in the survey data. This can help researchers simplify the data and identify patterns and relationships that may not be immediately apparent. Cluster analysis. when the uh population respondents are sparsely populated then this um cluster analysis is used. This can help researchers identify subgroups within the larger population and understand how different groups may differ in their attitudes, behaviors or preferences. This data can also be used to study the intermingled populations in a larger community. The intermingling of different population, different communities can be uh studied very well with the cluster analysis. Structural equation modeling used to test complex relationships between variables in the survey data. It can help researchers understand how different variables may be related to one another and how they may influence one uh another. Content analysis used to analyze the content uh open-ended responses in the uh survey. Researchers may use software to identify themes or categories in the responses or they may manually review and code the responses.

[00:19:50]Text mining used to analyze text based survey data such as responses to open-ended questions and software may be used to identify patterns and them themes in the text or they may be manually reviewed and code the coded the text. Applications of survey research.

[00:20:09]It can be applied in market research to uh companies use this survey method to gather data regarding the u consumer satisfaction, the consumer behavior and the you consumer purchase power, purchasing uh ability, habit etc. Public opinion research. Government and political parties use this uh method to understand public opinion uh in respect to any policy that has government has adopted or to find out the people public's opinion towards a particular uh political party.

[00:20:55]Social research used in social study to uh study social trends, attitudes, behaviors. For example, explore topics such as education, health and social inequality.

[00:21:09]Academic research in academic research to study various phenomena like testing theories, exploration, exploring relationships between variables and drawing conclusions. Survey research is being used. Customer satisfaction research. Companies use survey research to gather information about customer satisfaction with their products and services. This information is used to improve customer experiences and retention. Employee surveys.

[00:21:41]Organizations use this survey method to study to find out the uh about the employees of their organization, their job satisfaction, working conditions, organizational culture and other related uh problems. This information is used to improve employee retention and productivity. Health research in health uh in health area of health and this survey research is most uh used method of the data collection to such as the topics such as disease prevalence, health behaviors, health care care access and uh other the use of the particular u medicine or the effect of particular medicine on a on a group of patients.

[00:22:41]All these are carried out in this research. Researchers use survey data to develop interventions and improve health care outcomes. Uses of survey research.

[00:22:52]When this research questions involves attitudes, beliefs or opinions then um useful for understanding the attitudes, beliefs and opinions of the particular of the um respondents on a particular topic. For example, a survey could be used to understand public opinion on a particular issue, political issue when the research questions involve behaviors or experiences. Survey research can be used uh for understanding behaviors and experiences.

[00:23:27]For example, a survey could be used to understand the prevalence of a particular health behavior. When a large sample size is needed, sometimes um when sample size is large, we can get enuanced information about the uh sample. So large sample size is very much helpful in finding out the result and in that case the survey sample is survey research method is used. When the research question is timesensitive, sometimes topic which is very timesensitive uh we need a uh in uh the answer we need the opinion we need the answer of the community within a particular time period say 1 week or 1 month then this survey method is being used when the research question involves a geographically dispersed population. For example, if we I have to examine the um various databases uh procured yeah subscribed by different libraries in uh central universities of India. Yeah. Central University of Northeastern India. Then this survey method is most helpful and most useful.

[00:24:47]Steps of survey research. uh as SE researchers they there are common steps such as identifying the research question or topic, developing a survey instrument, selecting a sample, administer the survey, analyze the data and conclude. So uh these are the uh five or six steps in the survey research. Now we come to uh we we will talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the survey research. strength. There are several inherent strength of the uh survey research. One is it is an excellent vehicle of measuring uh a wide variety of unobservable data such as people's preferences, traits, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors or factual information etc. Ideally suited for collecting remote data about a population that is too large to observe directly due to their unobtrusive nature and the ability to respond at one's convenience. Questionnaire survey are preferred by some respondents.

[00:25:55]Interviews may be the only way of reaching certain population groups such as the homeless or illegal immigrants for which there is no sampling frame available. Large sample surveys may allow detection and small effects even while analyzing multiple variables and depending on the survey design may enable comparative analysis of the population subgroups within group and between group analysis can be carried out more economical in terms of researchers time effort and co cost and then the other methods such as experimental research and case research because it does not involve um costly instruments or u one neither one has to travel from one place to another because it can be carried out uh by simply uh sending the questionaires mailing the questionnaires. It also um one can nowadays uh we cannot uh it is very easy as the questionnaires can be mailed to persons so that no need to prepare questionnaire hard form of the questionnaires also weaknesses it is it has only one weakness and that is the large number of biases such as non-response bias sampling bias social desiraability bias and recall All bias. These are non-response bias. When uh we send when as as a researcher uh when we send questionaires, it is possible that we have mailed questionnaire to 500 populations and sample population but we receive only 200 or 250 questionaires.

[00:27:47]That is the sampling b. Sometimes um due to distance and due to other problems we can take the sample which is nearby to us which is uh easy which is more convenient to uh researcher that is the s social desiraability bias u that social socially social problem is there and to find that uh information to find the solution of that one that is used.

[00:28:21]So survey research serves as a flexible and powerful method for obtaining insights in this diverse domains by grasping the various types and techniques of survey research.

[00:28:33]Investigators can choose the most suitable strategy to achieve their research objectives through online for phone or inerson surveys. researcher can gather important data that adds in shaping decision policies and practices in the field such as education, healthcare, marketing and beyond.

[00:28:55]With this I end this uh session. Here are some references that you can go through.

[00:29:06]Thank you. Thanks a lot.