ABSTRACT
A great many qualitative research projects involve the collection of survey data, and some quantitative projects also use survey data. This chapter examines a number of issues of methodology regarding written surveys, in which respondents provide their responses on some written medium, including paper or electronic surveys. The first potential issue occurs when moving from the target population to the sampling frame. Sampling error is centrally dependent upon sample size. A related issue can arise in moving from the sample to the respondents. A sampling procedure that has elements of both convenience sampling and purposive sampling is called snowball sampling. A different set of formatting issues arises when we ask questions about the respondent’s opinion on an issue and we are interested in the strength of that opinion.
