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Repeated Cross-Sectional Surveys Using FTF

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Handbook of Survey Methodology for the Social Sciences

Abstract

When designing a survey two key problems have to be addressed, namely how to make sure that the final respondents represent the target population (or how to minimise non-observation errors) and how to make sure that the answers to survey questions represent the concepts under investigation (or how to minimise observation errors). This chapter discusses key factors in survey design, such as administration mode, coverage, sampling and non-response, the role of survey organisations and interviewers, questionnaire development, pretesting, fieldwork monitoring and archiving and dissemination. The main focus is on face-to-face surveys. In a cross-national survey there are additional considerations: the national context, variations in survey practice, the relevance of concepts in different countries, differences in the use of answer scales, translation of questions and, more generally, cross-national equivalence. This chapter provides a large number of examples, mainly drawn from the European Social Survey.

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Further reading: Survey Methodology and Quality

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Questionnaire design

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Interviewers

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Cross-national surveys

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Netherlands Institute for Social Research/SCP, PO Box 16164, 2500 BD, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Ineke Stoop

  2. Centre for Comparative Social Surveys, City University, Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, UK

    Eric Harrison

Authors
  1. Ineke Stoop
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  2. Eric Harrison
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Correspondence to Ineke Stoop .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, Tenth Ave. 899, New York, 10019, New York, USA

    Lior Gideon

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Stoop, I., Harrison, E. (2012). Repeated Cross-Sectional Surveys Using FTF. In: Gideon, L. (eds) Handbook of Survey Methodology for the Social Sciences. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3876-2_15

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