John Goyder

Surveys on Surveys: Limitations and Potentialities

Data from two surveys on surveys in Waterloo, Ontario were used to assess attitudes toward the survey. Questions in the two surveys inquired into motives for refusing/consenting to interviews; attitudes toward past experience with surveys; likes/ dislikes of form of contact, question format, and topic; perception of social pressure to respond to surveys; views on the social legitimacy of polling and on legislative controls for surveying. The surveys also collected response histories. Analysis of the attitudes began with a factor analysis of 12 items, which identified four factors descending from the general to the particular. It was found that attitudes are related to exposure to surveying, i.e., the more times a person reports requests for survey cooperation, the more unfavorable is his or her attitude toward the method. On the whole, however, the author finds that the evidence presented belies pessimistic views about surveys on surveys. John Goyder is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. This article is a revision of a paper presented at the 40th Annual AAPOR Conference, May 16-19, 1985. Research assistants on the record-linking portion of the study were Joti Sekhon, Christine Hutchinson, Ella Haley, and Joan Lyons. Twenty-one students enrolled in Sociology 282 in Winter 1982 collected the 1982 survey data. Patricia Anderson, Helen Chapman, and Joan Lyons conducted telephone interviews for the 1985 replication. Marnie Goyder was coder on the replication. The work reported herein has been supported by the University of Waterloo Faculty of Arts Resource Fund, the UW-SSHRC Small Grants Subcommittee, and by an SSHRC Leave Fellowship. The hospitality of the Social and Political Sciences Committee, Cambridge University, in granting the author Visiting Scholar privileges in 1985-86, greatly assisted the completion of the manuscript. Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 50 27-41 ? 1986 by the American Association for Public Opinion Research Published by The University of Chicago Press 0033-362X/86/0050-27/

Urbanization effects on survey nonresponse: a test within and across cities

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A Three-Generational Approach to Trends in Occupational Mobility

This paper addresses differences in survey response across city size by applying an explanation from House and Wolf to areas within cities. The data are from Toronto, Hamilton and Kitchener, in Canada. Consistent with other literature, response falls sharply from largest to smallest place, but variation in response rates within the cities is negligible. The intra-city analysis is accomplished by factor analyzing variables such as population density, crime rate and ethnic structure, mostly computed for census tracts, into a variable labelled social disorganization. What House and Wolf termed “compositional” variation in response is handled by record linking with municipal assessment information. The analysis is based on micro data taking the people listed for the sample as unit of observation.

Francophone life satisfaction and civic culture: A meta-analysis of the Canadian case

Secondary analyses of 1947 and 1963 data on three-generational occupational mobility are presented in order to provide additional perspective on the observation made in other studies that there has been a stable pattern of occupational status inheritance in the United States over the past several decades. Findings for males and females in the total samples show that the congruence between respondents and paternal grandfathers. It is found that when farm owners are excluded the degree of occupational status inheritance is considerably greater between the senior pair of generations. Implications of the findings are discussed.

A BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH TO RANKING ACADEMIC DEPARTMENTS BY PRESTIGE : THE CASE OF SOCIOLOGY IN ENGLISH-SPEAKING CANADA

Ingleharts notion that variation in civic culture accounts for cross-national differences in life satisfaction is tested for the case of Canadian Francophones. The data base is 15 national level surveys, containing in total 96 satisfaction questions asked between 1963 and 1991. It is contended that Quebec, the home of the majority of Canadas Francophones, historically has had a comparatively weak civic culture, which from Ingleharts hypothesis would predict low satisfaction. Using graphical analysis of general life satisfaction data this prediction is upheld, with the exception of a brief interval in the late 1970s. The same conclusion is reached using all 96 data points in a weighted least squares meta regression analysis, containing variables to denote five separate domains of satisfaction

Petitions, Public Opinion and Hospital Restructuring in Kitchener-Waterloo

Academic prestige has, due to the 21st century culture of declining survey cooperation, become harder to measure accurately using reputational surveys. Even if the high nonresponse on a survey of professors were ignorable in terms of bias, the credibility of such a survey would be challenged. Within sociology, citation index counts are not as useful an alternative as in more consensual and article-based disciplines such as economics. Sociologists publish in an immense variety of outlets, with much of the most important work appearing in books. Reported herein is a behavioural approach to academic prestige, based on each departments profile of doctoral origins of staff members (termed a broad by fuzzy approach) and on dominance within the hiring exchange matrix (giving a narrow but clearer reading). The case study is departments of sociology within English-speaking Canada. Academic Prestige, Reputational Surveys, Departments of Sociology, Doctoral Origins, Hirings, Canada.

Screening Clients for an Augmentative and Alternative Communication Clinic: A Multitrait-Multimethod Approach

A survey was collected in 1996–97 in which, early in the petition-gathering process by the Save Our Hospital Campaign to prevent the closing of St. Marys Hospital in Kitchener, Ontario, known petition signers and a general cross-section of the public were sampled. The survey data demonstrated that signers of the “Save St. Marys” petition did indeed have strong views about local health issues. The general public and the petition signers were differentiated not so much by personal health experiences or amount of contact with hospitals as by general concern among petitioners about the erosion of health care together with a conviction that the public should have a strong voice in health care decision making.

Face-to-Face Interviews and Mailed Questionnaires: The Net Difference in Response Rate

The aim of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) services is to support, enhance, or provide alternative methods of communication for individuals who are not independent verbal communicators. However, relatively little evaluative research has been conducted with adult AAC users. The establishment ofFreeportHospitalsAC Clinicfor adults included the development of questionnaires to gather information for the selection and provision of services for its clients. The present study addresses the issue reliability and validity of three novel measures contained within the AAC Clinics Background Information Questionnaire using a multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) design. Results from this evaluation are discussed in terms of clinical application and policy development.