1. LOGO
Principles of Survey Research
Author:O. Tamimi
An Najah National University

2. Contents
What is survey?
Example of surveys
The process of conducting a survey
Data gathering techniques
Types of data collected
Types of survey questions
Survey sampling procedure
Data analysis & discussion

3. What is survey?
A survey is a research method for collecting information from a selected group of
people using standardized questionnaires or interviews. Questionnaire is just one
part of survey
Process
What is questionnaires
A list of survey questions asked to respondents to extract specific information.
Questionnaire is the data collection component of overall survey.
Are questionnaires and surveys the same ?
Very often the questionnaire and survey are used to mean the same thing. But there
is an important distinction between them: Survey describes the process of
conducting the research, which includes a series of 7-steps, while the questionnaire
is one part of the survey process
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4. Examples of Surveys
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General Topics Specific Survey Studies
Course evaluation survey Junk food health related issues survey
Classrooms evaluation survey Health consequences of smoking cigarettes survey
Product Survey Hazardous chemicals in our everyday lives survey
Customer satisfaction survey Gender and racial discrimination at work place survey
Event satisfaction survey Al-Najah Campus safety and security survey
Health assessment survey Taxi driver survey in Nablus city
Patient satisfaction survey

5. The process of conducting a survey
Step-1: Defining the objective of the survey. It often comes from the thought “why I am
doing this survey?”
Step-2: Constructing the questionnaire, a well designed questionnaire can provide
information about opinions, beliefs & practices of group of individuals
Step-3: Methods of conducting the survey
 Decide about the procedure
 Sample size, how many people you will survey and their age
 How you will survey your subject(by phone, in class or interview)
Step-4: Testing the questionnaire
Find out if the questionnaire’s content is clear and consistent with the subject.
Get some of your colleagues to review them
Step-5: Administering the questionnaire
in small study you can administer the questionnaire your self, but in large survey
you will need helpers
Step-6: Data entry and analysis
statistical analysis is to be carried out
Step-7: Writing the report
The final stage of survey process is documenting the findings in a report
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6. Page-4 An Najah National University O. Tamimi
There are two main basic ways in which survey data are gathered: Interview based and
Questionnaire based
Data Gathering Techniques (Survey Classifications)

7. Hand Delivered Questionnaire (self completed questionnaire). The questionnaire is
handed in person, the respondent will fill it up and submit it back to the researcher
Advantage Less expensive compared with the face to face interview
Disadvantage
Limited opportunity for clarification if a respondent doesn’t understand
a question
Web Questionnaire A collection of questions presented on a webpage and sent to the
respondent’s email addresses. The survey design, distribution, completion and data
analysis are done using through web-based applications
Advantage Easy to administer, convenient for respondents
Disadvantage Can be confused as SPAM
Face to Face Interview (questionnaire is completed by the interviewer) The
interviewer reads the questions in a face to face setting
Advantage Interviewer is present to provide assistance
Disadvantage High cost because it involves a lot of traveling and hiring interviewers
Phone Interview Interviewers usually conducts a phone interview with the
respondents. The survey questions and their answers are handled by the interviewer
Advantage Large number of surveys can be acquired in a short time
Disadvantage Requires a highly skilled interviewers
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8. Face to Face
Survey
Telephone
Survey
Self Completed
Questionnaire
Web
Questionnaire
Turn Around Time Slow Fast Fast Fast
Cost High Medium Low Very Low
Interviewers
Required
Yes Yes No No
Response Rate High Medium Low Low
Characteristics of Data Gathering Techniques
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cost: refers to the overhead cost and travelling cost
response rate: refers to the number of people who answered the questionnaire
divided by the number of people in the sample
Notes

9. There are four main types of data you might want to obtain through the survey
Types of Data Collected
Attitude
To indicate whether the respondents have positive or negative feeling
about an issue
Behavior
Asking the respondents to describe what they have done in the past or
what they are currently doing. They are typically analyzed in terms of
 Whether the behavior is present or absent
 Frequency of the behavior
Opinion It is the respondent’s thought towards something
Attributes
Demographic
Data
Typically ask for information about the characteristic of the population:
like age, gender, ethnic-group, education, occupation, or cultural
background. Attribute questions are important to evaluate how
attitudes, behavior differ for respondents with various attributes
Fact: I learned that there was a small earthquake hit the city of Nablus
Opinion: A major earthquake is expected to take place
To what extent do you think that indirect exposure to smoke is dangerous for health?
What is your gender? How old are you? What is your race/ethnicity?
In a typical weak, how many times do you eat out at a restaurant? (eating habit)
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10. Types of survey questions
Open ended question: is a question at which there is no single answer.it actually gives
the respondents the opportunity to answer using their own words, the answer could
come in one sentence or more.
Closed ended question: has a definite set of answers from which the respondent
choses. closed ended question is easy to summarize, but it may take much more time to
design. Closed ended questions have many different styles, these are:
 Multiple choice question
 Categorical question
 Dichotomous question
 Rank order question
 Likert scale question (Matrix)
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Open ended question Closed ended question
Advantage
They permit adequate answers
to complex questions
It is easier to answer and easier to
analyze
Disadvantage
A greater amount of
respondents time, thought and
effort is necessary
Take more time to construct
Example Why did you choose your major? Are you satisfied with your college?

11. Multiple Choice Question (single or multiple responses)
The respondent is given a list of items and is asked to choose either one
answer that best applies or multiple answers
Types of multiple choice questions
 Radio buttons or check-boxes
 Drop-down
 Matrix Questions
Categorical Question
Example (single response using check-boxes)
What is your opinion of the product you recently purchased?
Excellent
Good
Poor
Fair
Used to categorize the respondents according to their age, gender,
ethnic group or their level of education.
18-28
19-28
39-48
29-38
Which age range you are in:
Example
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12. Dichotomous Question
Dichotomous questions are straight forward, typically asking respondents to choose
between
Yes / No
Agree or Disagree
True/False
Have you ever purchased a product or service from our website?
Yes
No
Example
Rank order question
Rank order questions allow a certain set of brands or products to be ranked based upon
a specific characteristic. Such as; cost, usage, reliability or features
Example
Based upon what you have heard or experienced, please rank the following car
brands according to their reliability.
2 Honda
4 Toyota
1 Mazda
3 Ford
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13. Likert scale question (Matrix)
Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
Strongly Agree
I do not understand the concept behind the Lab experiment ●
I like labs where I get a full help in doing the experiments ●
It was clear how the Lab experiments fit into this course ●
The lab manual for this course was well written ●
Tick one box to indicate your agreement or disagreement with each statement
Example
It allows the respondents to rate a specific question on a scale of choices from i.e.
strongly-agree to strongly-disagree. These choices are shown horizontally by default
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14. Survey Sampling Procedures
General sampling techniques
Random Sampling: every member of the population has an equal chance of being
selected
Advantage: Simplicity
Disadvantage: Not accurate if there is a variation
Example: in the following diagram, 13 units are randomly
sampled from the survey population of 100 students.
Note: No clustering is needed for the population sample
The term Refers to the selection of individual, units or cases to be studied
If the population of the people you are interested in is small enough, it may be possible
to survey the entire population, rather than choosing a sample. But if you have a large
population, you may have to select a sample
Factors that influence sample size
The size of sample for a particular survey depends on many factors
 Cost consideration (Budget, Desire to minimize the cost)
 Administrative concerns (Research deadline)
 Acceptable level of accuracy
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15. Stratified Sampling: is an accurate sampling method which involves dividing the survey
population into specific subgroups (strata), the population of each strata shares the same
characteristic such as; age, gender, career, income.
Reasons for stratified sampling
To ensure that all parts of the population are highlighted in the sample
Example: in the following diagram, the population survey consists of 50 students,
25 of whom were females and the remaining are male.
Step-1 in stratified sampling the population are split
into two strata. Female strata and Male strata.
Step-2 random sampling is carried out twice; one for males,
and one for females
Step-3 since the two strata have an equal size, then the size of each sample would
ideally be equal
Sampling size: if the population (N) consists of male-strata (m) & female-strata (f), where
N= m+f. if the total number of sample is (S),
male-sample size (s1) s1= m x (S÷N)
female-sample size (s2) s2= f x (S÷N)
Advantage: Accuracy
Disadvantage: Requires prior information about the population being sampled
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16. Strata-1
Male, Full-time
Size:40
Strata-2
Male, Part-time
Size:20
Strata-3
Female, Part -time
Size:16
Strata-4
Female, Full-time
Size:24
Population Survey: N=100
Example: The survey population consists of 100 worker divided into 4-strata, each of
which has a different size. If the required sampling size (S=25)
Calculate the sample-size for each strata
Sample-size (strata-1) s1= 40x(25÷100) =10
Sample-size (strata-2) s2= 20x(25÷100) = 5
Sample-size (strata-3) s3= 16x(25÷100) = 4
Sample-size (strata-4) s4= 24x(25÷100) = 6
Notice: S=s1+s2+s3+s4
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17. Data Analysis & Discussion
Once the questionnaires are completed and collected, the first step is to interpret the
data on excel sheet to create specific drawings or charts.
A questionnaire usually comes with a collection of closed ended questions like: multiple
choices and scaled matrix questions. For easier analysis each item in these questions is
converted into numerical value
For example: The scaled question (e.g. strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree &
strongly disagree) shall be converted to these values (1,2,3,4,5)
Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
Strongly Agree
I do not understand the concept behind the Lab experiment ●
I like labs where I get a full help in doing the experiments ●
It was clear how the Lab experiments fit into this course ●
The lab manual for this course was well written ●
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18. Questions Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree
1st Question 4 16 5 2 3
2nd Question 3 5 2 4 16
3rd Question 2 3 16 4 5
4th Question 16 5 4 3 3
Example: let us assume that the scaled question has been answered by a selected
sample of 30 students. The student’s responses per question are presented in table-1.
The response rate in this case is 100% because all of the students have participated in
answering the survey questions
1st Question Numerical Value Responses
Strongly Agree 1 4
Agree 2 16
Neutral 3 5
Disagree 4 2
Strongly Disagree 5 3
Table-1
Table-2
Table-2 is extracted from table-1 to show how the students feel about the 1st question
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19. 4
16
5
2
3
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
1 2 3 4 5
Responses
Options of Question-1
Question-1 Options relative to Responses
It is clearly noticed that nearly half of students have chose option-2, which means
that they have no clear understanding of the concept behind LAB experiments, while the
others indicate that there some degree of understanding. The variation of
responses is attributed to two factors; 1st factor: no adequate preparation nor
pre-lab questions were solved. 2nd factor: tutor shall dedicate half an hour time to explain
the theoretical concepts prior each LAB
Fig.1 The chart investigates the correlation of student responses on question-1
Discussion
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20. Sample Questionnaire Example

22. References and Further Reading
http://betterevaluation.org/evaluation-options/stratifiedrandom
https://www.roadsafetyevaluation.com/evaluationtopics/researchmethods/sampling.html
http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/y2790e/y2790e05.htm
http://www.statisticalconsultants.co.nz/weeklyfeatures/WF7.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/564172/statistics
http://home.ubalt.edu/ntsbarsh/stat-data/Surveys.htm#rssm
http://www.statpac.com/surveys/sampling.htm
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/Soc_survey.shtml
http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/survey.php
http://www.accesscable.net/~infopoll/tips.htm
http://www.surveysystem.com/sdesign.htm
http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/data-collection-analysis-tools/overview/survey.html
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/Soc_survey.shtml
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23. http://web.njcu.edu/sites/faculty/kivy/Uploads/survey_research.pdf
References and Further Reading
https://www.roadsafetyevaluation.com/evaluationtopics/info/tecniques-for-selecting-
samples.pdf
http://www.aapor.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Cell_Phone_Task_Force_Report&Temp
late=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=3189
Robert M. (2009). Survey methodology. 2nd edition. USA:Wiley. 488 pages
http://www.who.int/chp/steps/Part4.pdf#page=6&zoom=130,0,820
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