The Advantages of a Survey in Psychological Research

Survey research is one of the primary ways in which psychologists gain information about groups of people. Researchers ask people to respond to written or verbal questions about their attitudes, opinions, thoughts, feelings, preferences, behavior and potential behavior. Surveys can be conducted in person, over the telephone, on the Internet or with written questionnaires.

Information on large groups

• Researchers can survey 1,000 to 1,200 randomly selected people from a large city, a whole country or a specific group--such as registered voters--and be confident that their responses will be representative of the whole population (of the city, country or specific group). "Randomly selected" means that every person in the population studied (city, country or registered voters) has an equal possibility of being selected. The responses will resemble those of the total population if the responders are truly randomly sampled, and the researchers will be able to obtain information about a large group of people.

Interviews

• Surveys conducted by interviewers have a number of advantages. If respondents do not understand a question, the interviewer can explain it or repeat it using slightly different wording. Interviewers can get the amount of response desired by asking the respondent for more information or telling the respondent that the information is sufficient. Interviewers can remind participants to answer carefully. Surveys conducted via interviews help the researcher understand the answers.

Questionnaires

• Questionnaires are the most common survey method, because they are the simplest, easiest to use and least expensive type of research. A behavioral scientist can give a survey to a large sample of people. Another major advantage of questionnaires is that they are standardized. In other words, the instructions, wording and order of questions are the same for every respondent. Surveys also allow people to answer anonymously. They allow behavioral scientists to obtain information to which they have no direct access, such as people's personal thoughts, emotions and private behavior.

Internal Analyses

• Surveys in psychological research generally include questions about the respondent, such as age, gender and educational level. These responses allow the researcher to conduct internal analyses on the responses, such as determinng whether men are more likely than women to vote for a particular candidate or whether older respondents are more likely than younger respondents to approve of a new law.