An Introduction to Survey Research Methods

What are survey research methods?

Within the world of research, there are many specific avenues someone can take depending on the academic discipline. Moreover there are multiple types of research within a discipline itself. For instance, psychology considers a number of different aspects from clinical, experimental, to developmental perspectives. While terms remain the same, such as areas of validity, understanding sample/general populations, and considering confounds that may influence research, what is considered important may vary. Particularly, in survey research methods, population matters;  therefore, external validity is a major factor that is considered. In survey research methods, researchers are looking to answer questions that affect large populations, generalizing to the world is important for understanding human behavior and how best to solve a problem that affects an entire community. Questions can stem from topics of gun violence to agriculture; either way, the possible questions are limitless, but how to get answers that are valid and reliable is the focus. 

How to conduct survey research? 

Researchers must first come up with one or multiple research questions that pertain to an issue affecting society. For instance, if one were looking to investigate if smartphone usage has an effect on productivity and academic performance among college students, one may ask “Is there a relationship between smartphone usage and productivity of college students?” or “Does the use of smartphones negatively impact academic performance among college students?”. While the questions can be formatted in nuanced ways, the goal of the research would remain the same. Again, since this is survey research, researchers would create questions that can be answered by many people. Formats can consist of a Likert scale, which determines how someone agrees or disagrees with a statement. For example, with the prompt “I have missed planned work due to smartphones.” a participant can mark “Agree, somewhat agree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat disagree, disagree” to the previoua statement. A survey can also ask for objective answers like “Yes, Neither or No”, but nonetheless, everyone is answering in the same fashion in order to sort data in a feasible way to analyze and extrapolate meaning. Since survey research aims to assess a larger population (typically thousands of people), questions cannot be answered subjectively. Therefore,  participants need to choose from a list of possible answers and free response is rarely used as a result.

What sources are there to make surveys? 

Survey research not only asks and answers questions to large events, but also allows researchers to look at events at a smaller scale and examine case studies, once a phenomenon is identified and understood. At this point in the research process, researchers are able to create their own surveys with a more comprehensive understanding of an event. Surveys can be created using sites such as google survey, survey monkey, survey junkie, typeform, and microsoft forms. Surveys made with these applications are shareable and collect data efficiently. They are also easy to analyze, as platforms such as Google and Microsoft can provide a statistical breakdown that can be presented numerically and visualized through graphs. Therefore, these tools can easily calculate ratios and percentages that allows researchers to quantify data and determine which results are significant. 

What fields use survey research? 

For clinical use in the psychology field, there are surveys that psychologists and psychiatrists use to gather data about a population as well as within individual cases. For instance, the Hamilton Depression rating scale (HDRS) is a widely used clinically administered survey in which patients choose which statement about a symptom they may experience. This survey was made by collecting data about depression and then differentiating the severity of various symptoms commonly demonstrated in people with depression. Economists also use surveys to determine the average income and tax brackets of different populations. Further, politicians use surveys to gather information about candidates and favorable populations vs unfavorable populations. Overall, survey research methods are important to understand trends and current paradigms of society as well as to gather information on relevant issues in order to come up with solutions across all disciplines.