Abstract
This chapter ties together the preceding chapters, organizing them in terms of shared methodological topics—item and unit nonresponse, measurement and socially desirable responding, and interaction and interactional problems in the survey interview—and highlighting potential areas of future research. A common thread connecting the preceding chapters, inequality and its effect on each of the methodological topics, is traced and discussed. Feelings of powerlessness, marginalization, and stigmatization emerge as important potential causes of item nonresponse, measurement error, and other types of survey errors. As inequality is a primary focus of sociological theory and research, the need for sociological understandings in survey methodology is emphasized. Extensions and additional theories and perspectives that may be fruitfully applied to survey methodological problems are also discussed.
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Notes
- 1.
See comment on usage of terms “substantive” and “methodological” in Chap. 1, fn 4.
- 2.
Analysis is the author’s own and available upon request. Of course, there’s nothing magical about receiving a passport that leads one to automatically change one’s attitudes about immigrants or change one’s outlook on the people of other countries. Rather curiosity about the world is a likely a common cause of getting a passport and a positive view of immigrants.
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Brenner, P.S. (2020). Conclusions and Future Directions for Understanding Survey Methodology. In: Brenner, P.S. (eds) Understanding Survey Methodology. Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47256-6_14
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