ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the issues involved in the survey administration process. It discusses the key elements of survey timing, project planning, the pros and cons of various methods of administration and data collection, what to expect regarding response rates and how to use feedback from the process in real time to improve the survey effort. In any case, the survey administration should be planned so that respondents feel that they have adequate time to complete and return the instrument. Survey response rates lower than 50 per cent can be common in organizational settings due to such issues as a resistive organizational culture, and/or poor administration methods, project planning, survey construction, communication, survey leadership and survey sponsorship. More specifically, in survey work there is always a choice that must be made at some point before roll-out between conducting the survey using some sort of sample of employees or collecting data from the entire organization in a census effort.
