Abstract
This chapter offers a brief introduction into survey research. In the first part of the chapter, students learn about the importance of survey research in the social and behavioral sciences, substantive research areas where survey research is frequently used, and important cross-national survey such as the World Values Survey and the European Social Survey. In the second, I introduce different types of surveys.
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Notes
- 1.
In the literature, such reversed causation is often referred to as an endogeneity problem.
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Further Reading
Why Do We Need Survey Research?
Converse, J. M. (2017). Survey research in the United States: Roots and emergence 1890–1960. New York: Routledge. This book has more of an historical ankle. It tackles the history of survey research in the United States.
Davidov, E., Schmidt, P., & Schwartz, S. H. (2008). Bringing values back in: The adequacy of the European Social Survey to measure values in 20 countries. Public Opinion Quarterly, 72(3), 420–445. This rather short article highlights the importance of conducting a large pan-European survey to measure European’s social and political beliefs.
Schmitt, H., Hobolt, S. B., Popa, S. A., & Teperoglou, E. (2015). European parliament election study 2014, voter study. GESIS Data Archive, Cologne. ZA5160 Data file Version, 2(0). The European Voter Study is another important election study that researchers and students can access freely. It provides a comprehensive battery of variables about voting, political preferences, vote choice, demographics, and political and social opinions of the electorate.
Applied Survey Research
Almond, G. A., & Verba, S. (1963). The civic culture: Political attitudes and democracy in five nations. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Almond’s and Verba’s masterpiece is a seminal work in survey research measuring citizens’ political and civic attitudes in key Western democracies. The book is also one of the first books that systematically uses survey research to measure political traits.
Inglehart, R., & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, cultural change, and democracy: The human development sequence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This is an influential book, which uses data from the World Values Survey to explain modernization as a process that changes individual’s values away from traditional and patriarchal values and toward post-materialist values including environmental protection, minority rights, and gender equality.
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Stockemer, D. (2019). A Short Introduction to Survey Research. In: Quantitative Methods for the Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99118-4_3
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