Designing and Doing Survey Research

Lesley Andres is a professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on the sociology of higher education, issues of inequality and access, transitions across the life course, and mixed-methods survey research design. Her most recent books are Designing and Doing Survey Research (2012) and The Making of a Generation: Children of the 1970s in Adulthood (2010, co-authored with Johanna Wyn). She is the principal investigator of the Paths on Life’s Way project, the topic of this case study.

• Survey Research DesignThen and NowMapping Out the Survey Research ProcessConceptualizing Your Survey Research StudySurvey FormatsDeveloping Survey QuestionsSampling Theory and PracticeValidity and Reliability and TrustworthinessAdministration of Surveys and Enhancing Response RatesPreparing for Data AnalysisThe Next Steps

If the two main tasks of data analysis are, as Tukey said, detective work and guidance counseling, then this book makes its author, Lesley Andres, the Agatha Christie of survey research and a sage mentor on statistical journeys toward truth, precision, interpretation, and value. Beautifully written, and filled with practical advice, Andres′ book should become required readingStephen T. ZiliakProfessor of Economics, Roosevelt University, and author of The Cult of Statistical Significance There are many things to like about Lesley Andres′ book on designing and doing survey research. The language is accessible, the scope is impressive, it covers classic and contemporary authors, it provides concrete examples to beginning researchers, and it integrates survey research into a wider research framework. But there is one thing I loved: it breaks with the tradition of thinking of the survey as a quantitative method and, by extension, qualitative and quantitative methods as belonging to different paradigms. Lesley Andres convincingly argues and shows by example that there is much more to survey research than usually covered in conventional texts on this subject. Research methods books in this vein are overdue and are part of a new generation of applied research methods texts for the social and related sciencesManfred Max BergmanProfessor of Political Sociology and Methodology, University of Basel