Customer Reviews

Survey Sampling (Wiley Classics Library)

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I reviewed this book in 2001. I had the original 1965 edition with its very fmiliar cover. As I said back then the late Professor Kish was a leader in survey research and this book was used by many over the years. Wiley only publishes books in their classic series that were big sellers and maintained their usefulness over a long period of time. Much of the important developments in survey methods had been developed by the time this text first came out and Professor Kish's book made these methods very accessible to many practitioners in the social sciences and helped to improve the quality of survey research. Professor Kish pioneered this development with his research group at the University of Michigan along with summer programs designed to teach survey sampling to practitioners.

In this review I would like to make a comparison with the other classic text by William G. Cochran. Cochran's book is an important texts that is well written and mathematically rigorous. It is also extensively referenced in the literature and has been a very important reference for those of us who have done work in survey sampling. Also Cochran's book is a little more current than Kish's having been published in 1977. But Cochran's book has a much more theoretical bent and does not delve into practical applications. It is in this vein that Kish's book stands out over the others (practical applications especially in the social sciences).

I have used this book for a number of years & found that in most cases it has been THE book that I should have in my library. It is a must for the work place to buy.

Sampling is a topic that often receives short-shrift in the education of applied researchers of all kinds. Fortunately, since 1965 when it was first published, Leslie Kish's text has been available as a self-instructional tool.

Kish's text has become a widely read classic on survey sampling and sample design, and it remains accessible and informative. Many readers, myself included, first encountered concepts such as clustering, within-group homogeneity, design effects, and effective as opposed to nominal sample size by reading Kish. Oddly, concepts such as these have an even higher profile today because of the conspicuous role they play in multilevel analysis, a technique that raises especially difficult sampling questions.

Though it's now becoming a bit dated, if I were just starting out, I would still start with Kish's fine textbook. It provides a solid foundation for any additional study of sampling.

I studied this book in my university here in Ecuador, and i believe that is a good book; in this moment i am working in "Census Agricultura Project" and think to recommend to buy