Survey Practice June 2011
This issue of Survey Practice marks the end of its third year. Before describing this issue, we would like to remind our readers of the original goals for SP and ask you to continue to submit all types of articles that are appropriate for SP.
SP was designed for AAPOR members and others to make public their research findings that are useful to survey and public opinion practitioners. In addition, we hoped it would be a forum for other kinds of articles that helped to move the field. These articles might include thought pieces, discussions of important issues, summaries of research trends, summaries of persistent questions in survey research, innovative new techniques, and ask the experts. We also had as a goal that SP would offer those who do not publish articles in the scholarly press to have a place to demonstrate their skills, thoughts, and innovations, as well as their research findings.
The current issue:
The first article by Larry Malakhoff and Matt Jans is a good example of a non-research article. The use of avatars for survey data collection is getting closer and this article helps explain some of the important issues in the design of avatar interviewing.
In the second article, Howard Schuman provides an analysis of the effects of different ways of measuring strength of opinion in relation to gun control legislation. The other three articles provide information that can help survey researchers improve their methods. The article by Monique Young and her colleagues examines the effect of the time of year on a school-based survey response rates. Katherine McGonagle and her colleagues present data from an experiment on the use of incentives to maintain contacts with a survey panel. Mikael Gilljam and his colleagues demonstrate that they were able to obtain high response rates from elected officials in Sweden.
These types of articles and more are welcome in Survey Practice. Please consider submitting your recent AAPOR presentation (or any other article) to Survey Practice. Survey Practice is viewed an average of 3000 times each month. Your article will be read. The submission guidelines are at http://surveypractice.org/guidelines-for-authors/. Two simple guidelines – short (1500 words) and simple (easy to read). The length is flexible and we can help edit the article for Survey Practice readers.
Please contact us (survprac@indiana.edu) if you have questions.
Editors
- John Kennedy
- Diane O’Rourke
- Andy Peytchev
- David Moore