![]() |
| ||||||||||||||||||
|
Rent Your Textbooks
Save up to 70% when you rent your textbooks on Amazon. Keep your textbook rentals for a semester and rental return shipping is free. |
A comprehensive revision of the definitive guide to developing and conducting effective surveys across all modes
Now thoroughly updated and revised with information about all aspects of survey research, Internet, Mail, and Mixed-Mode Surveys: The Tailored Design Method, Third Edition provides professionals with practical "how-to" guidelinesgrounded in the most current researchon optimally using the Internet, mail, and phone channels to their best advantage.
Featuring expanded coverage of online surveys, recognized leaders in the fieldauthor Don Dillman and coauthors Jolene Smyth and Leah Christianshow you:
Strategies and tactics for determining the needs of a given survey, how to design it, and how to effectively administer it
How and when to use mail, telephone, and Internet surveys to your maximum advantage
Proven techniques to increase response rates
Guidance on how to obtain high-quality feedback from mail, electronic, and other self-administered surveys
Direction on how to construct effective questionnaires, including considerations of layout
The effects of sponsorship on the response rates of surveys
A complete, start-to-finish guide for every researcher to successfully plan and conduct Internet, mail, and telephone surveys, Internet, Mail, and Mixed-Mode Surveys: The Tailored Design Method, Third Edition presents a succinct and thorough review of survey research methods, equipping you to increase the validity and reliability, as well as response rates, of your surveys.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
For those of you looking for any help on statistics, this is NOT the book for you.
For those of you interested in increasing the validity and reliability of your surveys, this is could be the book for you. It does have an effective treatment of writing questions and effective survey design.
If you wish to become an expert in coverage, sample frames, sampling, etc, look elsewhere. That topic gets just 10 pages.
No book can do it all of course but I would have left out some of the "fluff" chapters Dillman included for some discussion of the more technical side of the statistics of analyzing surveys after you have designed them the way he suggests.
As has been pointed out, Dillman does not present as much theoretical material as he might. But, I don't think that that detracts from the strengths of this book. There are other books out there that cover the cognitive and social psychology behind survey answers, and there are other books that give you guidance on the scientific method, experimental design, sampling, etc. (I would recommend Babbie's Practice of Social Research) And Dillman even has a more hands-on book (How to Conduct Your Own Survey) for non-scientists.
But, the real strength of Dillman's book might be how well he instructs on how to put together a great questionnaire - the design, layout, order, question design and implementation.
I find his take on internet surveys to be controversial and a little out-of-date. But, my concerns might be viewed as those of a skeptic - I'm not yet convinced that internet surveys are viable for all that many situations. And, I think Dillman does a good job of laying out some of the challenges and promises of internet surveys.
Highly recommended!