Summary
Contents
Subject index
Public opinion theory and research are becoming increasingly significant in modern societies as people’s attitudes and behaviors become ever more volatile and opinion poll data becomes ever more readily available. This major new Handbook is the first to bring together into one volume the whole field of public opinion theory, research methodology, and the political and social embeddedness of polls in modern societies. It comprehensively maps out the state-of-the-art in contemporary scholarship on these topics.
The Methodological Strengths and Weaknesses of Survey Research
The Methodological Strengths and Weaknesses of Survey Research
Survey research is a technique that is well designed for assessing the prevalence and distribution of attitudes, as well as factual material about respondents. It has both strengths and weaknesses in comparison to other techniques for measuring public opinion.
Surveys measure the attitudes of a population of interest. In particular, scientific sample surveys ask questions of a sample of members of that population, taking enough interviews to be able to generalize to that larger population and trying to minimize nonresponse by people included in the sample, while using tested methods to measure the attitudes of respondents. Each part of this definition calls attention to a different challenge for surveys: the choice ...
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