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Quantitative Techniques-II

Notes respondents are at considerable risk legally if information they divulge should get into
the hand of the authorities. The same can be said for any target group that is engaging in
illegal or unpopular activities.
5. What are the geographic restrictions?: Is your population of interest dispersed over too
broad a geographic range for you to study feasibly with a personal interview? It may be
possible for you to send a mail instrument to a nationwide sample. You may be able to
conduct phone interviews with them. But it will almost certainly be less feasible to do
research that requires interviewers to visit directly with respondents if they are widely
dispersed.

Sampling Issues

The sample is the actual group you will have to contact in some way. There are several important
sampling issues you need to consider when doing survey research.
1. What data is available? : What information do you have about your sample? Do you
know their current addresses? Their current phone numbers? Are your contact lists up to
date?
2. Can respondents be found?: Can your respondents be located? Some people are very busy.
Some travel a lot. Some work the night shift. Even if you have an accurate phone or
address, you may not be able to locate or make contact with your sample.

3. Who is the respondent?: Who is the respondent in your study? Let’s say you draw a sample
of households in a small city. A household is not a respondent. Do you want to interview
a specific individual? Do you want to talk only to the “head of household” (and how is that
person defined)? Are you willing to talk to any member of the household? Do you state
that you will speak to the first adult member of the household who opens the door? What
if that person is unwilling to be interviewed but someone else in the house is willing?
How do you deal with multi-family households? Similar problems arise when you sample
groups, agencies, or companies. Can you survey any member of the organization? Or, do
you only want to speak to the Director of Human Resources? What if the person you
would like to interview is unwilling or unable to participate? Do you use another member
of the organization?

4. Can all members of population be sampled?: If you have an incomplete list of the population
(i.e., sampling frame) you may not be able to sample every member of the population.
Lists of various groups are extremely hard to keep up to date. People move or change their
names. Even though they are on your sampling frame listing, you may not be able to get
to them. And, it’s possible they are not even on the list.
5. Are response rates likely to be a problem?: Even if you are able to solve all of the other
population and sampling problems, you still have to deal with the issue of response rates.
Some members of your sample will simply refuse to respond. Others have the best of
intentions, but can’t seem to find the time to send in your questionnaire by the due date.
Still others misplace the instrument or forget about the appointment for an interview.
Low response rates are among the most difficult of problems in survey research. They can
ruin an otherwise well-designed survey effort.

Question Issues

Sometimes the nature of what you want to ask respondents will determine the type of survey
you select.

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