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Surveys

Although terminology and usage varies within and across domains, a survey is generally understood to be a form of data collection that relies on self-reported responses to a previously prepared set of questions. Self-report requires respondents to introspect (i.e., look inside themselves to gain an understanding of their own thoughts and feelings) and then provide a response to the survey question. Questions can cover a variety of topics, including past or present behavior (e.g., number of hours watching television in the past week), intentions for the future (e.g., intention to watch television in the next week), self-perceptions and other thoughts (e.g., attitudes toward watching television), and perceptions of others (e.g., how many hours friends spend watching television each week). Even though some surveys are as short as one or two questions, others are hundreds of questions long and can take hours to complete. Surveys can be conducted with paper and pencil, over the phone, or with electronics (e.g., computer programs or webpages). This entry reviews key characteristics as well as the advantages and disadvantages of surveys; it also discusses the use of surveys as part of a mixed methods research approach.

Comparison of Key Characteristics

Two key characteristics set surveys apart from other forms of data collection: self-reported responses and predetermined (i.e., structured) questions. These characteristics provide unique advantages, and some disadvantages, in comparison to other common forms of data collection, such as unstructured self-report, the observations of researchers, and physiological testing. As stated previously, self-report requires participants to think about and then report an answer to a question posed by researchers. This process is most noticeably different from physiological tests, which avoid asking for participants’ introspections. For example, a survey measuring illicit drug use might directly ask participants to report the type and number of times they had used illicit drugs, while a physiological test might involve measuring the amount of illicit drugs in samples of participants’ blood.

The second key characteristic of surveys is predetermined questions. Researchers using a survey must decide what topics should be measured before starting data collection and choose or create the best questions to assess those topics. For example, researchers doing a survey on mental health might first decide to measure symptoms of depression and then decide whether to use a preexisting set of questions (e.g., the Beck Depression Inventory) or develop new questions. This characteristic can be best understood when contrasted with unstructured self-report. Like surveys, unstructured self-report methods (e.g., unstructured interviews or focus groups) directly ask participants to respond to questions but do not follow a predetermined set of questions. Instead, researchers follow the flow of a participant’s thoughts and spontaneously develop new questions to probe these responses in directions that might not have otherwise been anticipated.

Advantages of Surveys

One advantage of surveys is that they allow researchers to assess participants’ thoughts more directly than observational methods or physiological tests, both of which require researchers to infer participants’ thoughts. Although some physiological tests may be able to approximate a person’s thoughts (e.g., live images of brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging), researchers are currently unable to know exactly what a person is thinking based purely on these measures. When using observation, researchers usually avoid directly asking questions to the participants and must instead infer participants’ thoughts based on their behavior. In contrast, survey participants are directly asked to introspect and then report their thoughts, which are arguably more likely to be accurate than the researchers’ inferences. Thus, surveys are particularly useful when the goal of a study is to measure participants’ perceptions, attitudes, emotional state, or other thoughts.

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