Brad Edwards

Survey Methods in Multinational, Multiregional, and Multicultural Contexts: Harkness/Survey

This book provides up-to-date insight into key aspects of methodological research for comparative surveys. It discusses methodological considerations for surveys that are deliberately designed for ...

Hard-to-survey populations

This book offers the first systematic look at the populations and settings that make surveys hard to conduct and at the methods researchers use to meet these challenges. It covers a wide range of populations (immigrants, persons with intellectual difficulties, and political extremists) and settings (war zones, homeless shelters) that offer special problems or present unusual challenges for surveys. The team of international contributors also addresses sampling strategies including methods such as respondent-driven sampling and examines data collection strategies including advertising and other methods for engaging otherwise difficult populations.

Total survey error in practice

This book provides an overview of the TSE framework and current TSE research as related to survey design, data collection, estimation, and analysis. It recognizes that survey data affects many public policy and business decisions and thus focuses on the framework for understanding and improving survey data quality. The book also addresses issues with data quality in official statistics and in social, opinion, and market research as these fields continue to evolve, leading to larger and messier data sets. This perspective challenges survey organizations to find ways to collect and process data more efficiently without sacrificing quality. The volume consists of the most up-to-date research and reporting from over 70 contributors representing the best academics and researchers from a range of fields. The chapters are broken out into five main sections: The Concept of TSE and the TSE Paradigm, Implications for Survey Design, Data Collection and Data Processing Applications, Evaluation and Improvement, and Estimation and Analysis. Each chapter introduces and examines multiple error sources, such as sampling error, measurement error, and nonresponse error, which often offer the greatest risks to data quality, while also encouraging readers not to lose sight of the less commonly studied error sources, such as coverage error, processing error, and specification error. The book also notes the relationships between errors and the ways in which efforts to reduce one type can increase another, resulting in an estimate with larger total error.

Paradata and Dashboards in PIAAC

Purpose This paper aims to provides a brief review of the dashboard literature, an account of the development of performance dashboards for field data collection at Westat, and more specifically for the first cycle of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). A brief concluding section offers suggestions for improvements in survey dashboards for PIAAC’s next cycle. Design/methodology/approach To manage field work at Westat, the authors create views into various paradata databases and present them in a dashboard, showing key performance indicators at a glance. Users can drill down from the dashboard into underlying databases to investigate potential problems. The US PIAAC dashboard is a monitoring system that supports daily review of many activities. For example, it provides overnight alerts to the field supervisor when global positioning system (GPS) data from an interviewer’s smartphone shows the interview occurred far from the respondent’s home. Findings Performance dashboards may represent best practice for monitoring field activities. Paradata sources and systems vary greatly across the PIAAC countries, but a multitude of process data exists in every country and can be used to create quality indicators and a monitoring system. PIAAC can establish standards/guidelines to improve visualization of quality metrics and management data, regardless of the local survey infrastructure. Originality/value The core of the paper is a case study of the experiences on the US PIAAC implementation of dashboards to monitor survey quality, production and costs, with special attention to the issue of fabrication.

Hard-to-Survey Populations: List of contributors

This book offers the first systematic look at the populations and settings that make surveys hard to conduct and at the methods researchers use to meet these challenges. It covers a wide range of populations (immigrants, persons with intellectual difficulties, and political extremists) and settings (war zones, homeless shelters) that offer special problems or present unusual challenges for surveys. The team of international contributors also addresses sampling strategies including methods such as respondent-driven sampling and examines data collection strategies including advertising and other methods for engaging otherwise difficult populations.

Hard-to-Survey Populations: Conducting surveys with special populations

This book offers the first systematic look at the populations and settings that make surveys hard to conduct and at the methods researchers use to meet these challenges. It covers a wide range of populations (immigrants, persons with intellectual difficulties, and political extremists) and settings (war zones, homeless shelters) that offer special problems or present unusual challenges for surveys. The team of international contributors also addresses sampling strategies including methods such as respondent-driven sampling and examines data collection strategies including advertising and other methods for engaging otherwise difficult populations.

Hard-to-Survey Populations: Dedication

This book offers the first systematic look at the populations and settings that make surveys hard to conduct and at the methods researchers use to meet these challenges. It covers a wide range of populations (immigrants, persons with intellectual difficulties, and political extremists) and settings (war zones, homeless shelters) that offer special problems or present unusual challenges for surveys. The team of international contributors also addresses sampling strategies including methods such as respondent-driven sampling and examines data collection strategies including advertising and other methods for engaging otherwise difficult populations.

Hard-to-Survey Populations: Data collection strategies for the hard to survey

This book offers the first systematic look at the populations and settings that make surveys hard to conduct and at the methods researchers use to meet these challenges. It covers a wide range of populations (immigrants, persons with intellectual difficulties, and political extremists) and settings (war zones, homeless shelters) that offer special problems or present unusual challenges for surveys. The team of international contributors also addresses sampling strategies including methods such as respondent-driven sampling and examines data collection strategies including advertising and other methods for engaging otherwise difficult populations.

Hard-to-Survey Populations: List of figures

This book offers the first systematic look at the populations and settings that make surveys hard to conduct and at the methods researchers use to meet these challenges. It covers a wide range of populations (immigrants, persons with intellectual difficulties, and political extremists) and settings (war zones, homeless shelters) that offer special problems or present unusual challenges for surveys. The team of international contributors also addresses sampling strategies including methods such as respondent-driven sampling and examines data collection strategies including advertising and other methods for engaging otherwise difficult populations.