Survey

An investigation undertaken to discover the current distribution of something in the world or the current state of progress in a particular area of inquiry.

Survey research involves asking subjects questions and is an economical method for gathering large amounts of information. Such sets of questions are used to assess the attitudes and opinions of a population – e.g., the citizens of a country – about various issues of interest, for example, their voting intentions, how they view a proposed legislative change, or how they identify themselves on some dimension: “do you consider yourself liberal or conservative, or neither?”, etc.

However, difficulties and limitations include the degree of effort and care required to secure a representative sample for study (sample bias and selection bias) and reporting problems and failures (subjects’ dishonesty or lack of candour, motivational biases, and their accuracy – or otherwise –  reporting factual information, as well as ‘fluidity’ of subjects’ opinions).

Presents an inability to control extraneous variables affecting subject responses.