How to Conduct Self-Administered and Mail Surveys

"The authors discuss self-administered questionnaires, the content and format of the questionnaire, "user-friendly" questionnaires and response categories, and survey implementation. They offer excellent checklists for deciding whether or not to use a mail questionnaire, for constructing questions and response categories, for minimizing bias, for writing questionnaire specifications, for formatting and finalizing questionnaires, and for motivating respondents and writing cover letters."
--Peter Hernon, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College

 

How do you decide whether a self-administered questionnaire is appropriate for your research question? This book provides readers with an answer to this question while giving them all the basic tools needed for conducting a self-administered or mail survey. Updated to include data from the 2000 Census, the authors show how to develop questions and format a user-friendly questionnaire; pretest, pilot test, and revise questionnaires; and write advance and cover letters that help motivate and increase response rates. They describe how to track and time follow-ups to non-respondents; estimate personnel requirements; and determine the costs of a self-administered or mailed survey. They also demonstrate how to process, edit, and code questionnaires; keep records; fully document how the questionnaire was developed and administered; and how the data collected is related to the questionnaire. New to this edition is expanded coverage on Web-based questionnaires, and literacy and language issues.