Survey Research

Survey research grew out of the need to study opinions, attitudes and social facts on a large scale; its earliest uses were to establish an existing 'baseline' reality, such as literacy rates, religious affiliation, income levels, or attitudes toward family planning or towards devolving power to panchayati raj institutions for running local health, education and sanitation programmes. Over time, survey research has evolved into a more sophisticated technique that can also help infer various kinds of causal relationships, not merely describe the current state of affairs. The sub-sections below describe the main techniques used to conduct a survey, personal interviews, questionnaires, and telephone surveys, each with its own particular strengths and drawbacks. Taken together, the survey method has real advantages: information can be gathered quickly and efficiently from very large numbers of people, and because it can be conducted quickly, public opinion on newly emerging issues can be captured almost as soon as those issues arise. It also has genuine limitations: respondents may give inaccurate information because of memory lapses, or because they are reluctant to reveal what they truly believe about a sensitive iss …