Assessing the Accuracy of Survey Research

Abstract

Assessing survey accuracy is important to the development of valid and reliable methodologies for the practice of survey research. However, despite this importance, surprisingly little research has been done gauging survey measurement accuracy, largely due to the difficulty with identifying and collecting objective measures to use as accuracy benchmarks for surveys. Furthermore, the work that has examined this issue has not ever been comprehensively integrated. This chapter highlights the high-level findings of the first ever meta-analysis of survey accuracy. The results indicate that there is solid empirical evidence for optimism about the accuracy of survey data.