Improving survey questions : design and evaluation

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Title:

Author:

Fowler, Floyd J.

ISBN:

9780803945838

9780803945821

Personal Author:

Fowler, Floyd J.

Publication Information:

Thousand Oaks : Sage Publications, c1995.

Physical Description:

viii, 191 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.

Series:

Applied social research methods series ; v. 38

Series Title:

Applied social research methods series ; v. 38

Contents:

1. Questions as Measures: An Overview -- 2. Designing Questions to Gather Factual Data -- 3. Questions to Measure Subjective States -- 4. Some General Rules for Designing Good Survey Instruments -- 5. Presurvey Evaluation of Questions -- 6. Assessing the Validity of Survey Questions -- 7. Question Design and Evaluation Issues in Perspective -- Appendix A: Commonly Used Measurement Dimensions -- Appendix B: Measures of Common Covariates -- Appendix C: About Open-Ended Questions -- Appendix D: Achieving Standardized Interviews.

Subject Term:

Social surveys -- Methodology.

Social sciences -- Research -- Methodology.

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168025505351	300.723 F785.I 1995	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

What is a good question? Although there are several potential sources for error in survey data, the validity of surveys depends on the design of the questions asked. This book shows how to word and format a question, write questions that will evoke the kind of answers for which they were designed, and empirically evaluate survey questions. In addition, the book covers topics such as how to write good questions aimed at collecting information about objective facts and events, how to measure subjective phenomena, some alternative methods for attacking common measurement problems; shows how to evaluate the extent to which questions are consistently understood and administered, and explains how to evaluate the data resulting from a set of questions. A clearly written book, Improving Survey Questions enables researchers and practitioners to write better survey questions and helps users of survey data to evaluate their data more critically.