Survey Practice began as an idea of Bob Groves, Sandy Berry, and a few others who thought that The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) needed a publication that could provide good, sound information to new survey researchers, be relatively flexible, be able to address current issues, and be easy to read. The AAPOR executive council agreed and approved the concept.
Then, a larger group that included the editors (John Kennedy, David Moore, Diane O’Rourke, and Andy Peytchev) and many members of the editorial board developed the scope and mission of Survey Practice. The mission of Survey Practice:
Survey Practice provides current information on issues in survey research and public opinion. The articles in Survey Practice emphasize useful and practical information designed to enhance survey quality by providing a forum to share advances in practical survey methods, current information on conditions affecting survey research, and interesting features about surveys and people who work in survey research. Survey Practice is intended for practicing survey and public opinion researchers.
Survey Practice is not an academic journal. Its articles will not have extensive literature reviews, elaborated hypotheses, or difficult statistics. Survey Practice is not a competitor of Public Opinion Quarterly.
Survey Practice will have both short research articles and features. The research articles will focus on issues of interest and utility to public opinion and survey researchers. These articles are listed as “public opinion” and “methods” in the Categories field. The features will include interviews with interesting survey researchers, an “Ask the Experts” column, and a FieldNotes column that has short blurbs about surveys and those who conduct them. We plan to have two or three research articles and one or two features in each monthly issue.
As an Internet publication, Survey Practice will be interactive. We expect that readers will comment on the articles and pose questions to the authors. We hope that through these exchanges, the collective wisdom of AAPOR members can be used to improve our survey methods and our understanding of important public opinion issues.
The editors have an applied orientation to survey research and public opinion. John Kennedy has directed a survey center for more than 20 years and worked at the U.S. Census Bureau for four years. David Moore has a distinguished career in public opinion research including working in The Gallup Organization. Diane O’Rourke worked at the University of Illinois Survey Research Laboratory for over 30 years, where she was Assistant Director of Survey Operations at the time of her retirement. Andy Peytchev is a recent University of Michigan grad and is currently a survey methodologist at RTI International. The members of the editorial board are practicing survey researchers who are involved in applied, practical survey research and public opinion every day.
To serve practitioners well, we need your help. You can do this by commenting on the articles which could include how you handled similar issues. Please tell us what kinds of articles you want in Survey Practice. We plan to have two or three research articles and one or two features in each monthly issue but we can publish more to meet your needs.
We encourage you to send research articles and research notes to Survey Practice. While we maintain quality standards, we are also very author-friendly. We also encourage you to send blurbs for FieldNotes, suggestions for interviews, questions for Ask the Experts, and any other ideas you have for articles or features that would make Survey Practice more useful to you.
Survey Practice is intended to help our profession and everyone is welcome to contribute.