Survey Practice This Month

This month, we try something new – a website review. Tim Johnson reviews a website that contains a large amount of top-quality information on cross-national, cross-cultural survey methods. Four experts (Gene Lutz, Tom Guterbock, Molly Longstreth, Bob Craddock) provide information about their experiences with cell phone samples in the “Ask the Experts” column. Our third feature is a thought piece from a group that is attempting to develop alternative methods to measure survey representativeness. Rui Wang and her team summarize a large project that analyzes Asian and Asian-American response patterns. Sid Groneman uses a variety of datasets to look at American attitudes towards Jews.

A word about WordPress

We are using blog software – WordPress – to publish Survey Practice. We (the editors) chose WordPress because it is free (except for some purchased upgrades) and relatively easy to use. Two editors already had WordPress blogs. However, we find some limitations, especially in displaying tables and charts. Each month, we learn a little more about how to use the software. If you find some display problems or have suggestions for improving the display, please send them to us.

Your evaluation of Survey Practice so far

We designed Survey Practice so that it could be flexible and not lock us into a format. We continue to experiment with types of articles and a variety of content. If you have a minute, please send us some feedback on the first three issues. You can post a comment at the bottom or send the comments to survprac@indiana.edu.

• John Kennedy
• Diane O’Rourke
• David Moore
• Andy Peytchev