5a Sampling methods and sample size
Total Survey Error diagram from Groves, Fowler, et al. (2009).
Working backward to decide how many answers you need:
- Divide the number of responses you need by the estimated response rate
e.g., 100 responses divided by 5% = 2,000 for your sample size
5b Types of surveys
- A descriptive survey gets a number that tells you something
- A comparative survey tells you whether a number is changing over time
- A modeling survey finds factors that influence an outcome
- An exploratory survey gathers whatever information it can
- Sometimes surveys start as a mixture
Jarrett, Caroline. Surveys That Work : a Practical Guide for Designing Better Surveys (pp 13-17). Brooklyn, New York: Rosenfeld Media, 2021.
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Survey Errors and Survey Costs by The Wiley-Interscience Paperback Series consists of selected books that have been made more accessible to consumers in an effort to increase global appeal and general circulation. With these new unabridged softcover volumes, Wiley hopes to extend the lives of these works by making them available to future generations of statisticians, mathematicians, and scientists. "Survey Errors and Survey Costs is a well-written, well-presented, and highly readable text that should be on every error-conscious statistician's bookshelf. Any courses that cover the theory and design of surveys should certainly have Survey Errors and Survey Costs on their reading lists." -Phil Edwards MEL, Aston University Science Park, UK Review in The Statistician, Vol. 40, No. 3, 1991 "This volume is an extremely valuable contribution to survey methodology. It has many virtues: First, it provides a framework in which survey errors can be segregated by sources. Second, Groves has skillfully synthesized existing knowledge, bringing together in an easily accessible form empirical knowledge from a variety of sources. Third, he has managed to integrate into a common framework the contributions of several disciplines. For example, the work of psychometricians and cognitive psychologists is made relevant to the research of econometricians as well as the field experience of sociologists. Finally, but not least, Groves has managed to present all this in a style that is accessible to a wide variety of readers ranging from survey specialists to policymakers." -Peter H. Rossi University of Massachusetts at Amherst Review in Journal of Official Statistics, January 1991ISBN: 9780471611714Publication Date: 1989-07-27
