Web Exercises

1. Who does survey research and how do they do it? These questions can be answered through careful inspection of ongoing surveys and the organizations that administer them at https://ciser.cornell.edu/data/data-archive/. Spend some time reading about the different survey research organizations, and write a brief summary of the types of research they conduct, the projects in which they are involved, and the resources they offer on their websites. What are the distinctive features of different survey research organizations?

2. Go to the Research Triangle Institute site at www.rti.org. Click on “Services and Capabilities” and then “Surveys and Data Collection.” Read some of the stories about survey design, instrument development, survey methodologies, and data collection. Which innovations in survey design can you identify?

3. Go to the UK Data Service at http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/variables. In the search box, enter topics of interest such as “health” or “inequality.” Review five questions for two topic areas and critique them in terms of the principles for question writing that you have learned. Do you find any question features that might be attributed to the use of British English?