ABSTRACT
The social survey is conventionally associated with questionnaires and interviewing. As such it may appear peculiar that we now come to a discussion of the nature of the survey having addressed questionnaires and interviews in Chapter 2. However, in much the same way that the experiment is not a source of data, but rather a particular framework within which data are collected, the survey too is best conceptualized as a research design. Questionnaires and interviews are methods of data collection which are in considerable use in the context of experimental research as well as in survey investigations. The survey, then, provides a particular kind of structure within which these methods of data collection are employed. The distinctiveness of the survey, in contrast to the experiment, will be a prominent focus of this chapter. Further, just as the experimental approach can be viewed as subsuming different designs, albeit with a number of common characteristics, the survey also reveals itself in contrasting forms. In other words, when referring to experimental and survey designs we are in fact employing fairly broad terms which refer to different orientations to the structure of an investigation, but which comprise a number of variations.
