What are the borsie elements of the survey method ? What is chief advantage of this method ?
Elements : (a) A survey is an attempt to provide an overview. It is a comprehensive or wide-ranging perspective on some subject based on information obtained from a carefully chosen representative set of people. Such people are usually referred to as ‘respondents’ - They respond to the questions asked to them by the researchers.
(b) Survey research is usually done by large teams consisting of those who plan and design the study (the researchers) and their associates and assistants (the latter are called ‘investigations’ or ‘research assistants’)
(c) Survey question may be asked and answered in various forms. Generally they are asked orally during personal visit by the investigator and some time through telephone conversation. Responses may also be sort in writing questionnaires brought by investigators or sent through the post.
(d) With the increasng presence of computer and telecommunication technology, these days it is also possible for surveys to be connected electronically in this format, respodent receive and responded to question by e-mail, the internet, similiar electronic medium.
Advantage of survey method :
(i) The survey’s main advantage as a social scientific method is that it allows us to generalise results for a large population while actually studying only a small portion of this population. Thus a survey makes it possible to study large populations with a manageable investment of time, effort and money. That is why it is such a popular method in the social sciences and other fields.
(ii) The simple survey is able to provide a generalisable result despite being selective by taping advantage of the discoveries of a branch of statistics called sampling theory. The key element enabling this ‘shortcut’ is the representative of the sample.
