POS 4931 (Section 3751)
Survey Research
Fall, 2009
Dr. Wald

MWF, 5th period
Anderson 303
11:45-12:35
 Contact:  kenwald@ufl.edu or 352-273-2391
Anderson 21
 Hours:  MW 2:00-4:00; Tu, 1:30-3:30 or by appointment

Survey Research is designed to prepare students to understand, conduct, analyze and assess opinion surveys and polls. Although it is open to all students, the course will be particularly useful to assist students who are considering, planning or currently working on research projects with a survey component. By the end of the semester, you should be able to decide whether and when surveys are appropriate means of data collection, have a good idea of how to put together a survey, conduct basic quantitative analysis of survey data, and report the findings. The goal is also to make you aware of the pitfalls that face would-be survey researchers.

Procedures & Policies: Your course grade will be based on a number of factors—several short papers to be assigned (25%), a mid-term examination on October 15th (35%), class attendance (5%), and a final paper (35%). Details about these various assignments will be forthcoming.

The course will meet three times a week as scheduled above unless I give you specific notice to the contrary. Because of the technical nature of the material and the research emphasis of the course, attendance is required.  Some of our meetings will take place in the Political Science Data Lab, Anderson 001 (in the basement) or another locale if enrollment so requires. Access to this lab is normally available by password only so you should anticipate using one of the CIRCA public labs available on campus when you need access to restricted software outside of class.  

I have scheduled my office hours on . Events sometimes dictate the need to adjust these hours and I will try to give you advance notice of such changes. I’m happy to meet with you personally to discuss class matters by appointment. Contact me by email at kenwald@polisci.ufl.edu for such appointments. As a rule, it's much easier to get in touch with me by email than by telephone.

All written work submitted must comply with the UF Student Honor Code.  

Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students Office via the Disability Resource Center. The Dean of Students Office will provide documentation to the student who must then provide this documentation to the Instructor when requesting accommodation.

While every semester brings its own challenges, we've been warned to expect an outbreak of H1N1 flu that will wreak havoc on our plans. If you contract the disease, do not come to class and wait until your symptoms have been gone for 24 hours before attending. You will not require medical documentation should you miss a deadline or assignment due to the flu. Infecting me is grounds for failing the course and doing badly at life.

Books: In addition to some online readings available through the UF library, we will draw on three required texts which are available only at campus area bookstores. (I will try to have a copy of the core text on 2-hour reserve at Library West.)

Priscilla Salant & Don A. Dillman
How to Conduct Your Own Survey
New York: John Wiley, 1994

Barbara Norrander & Clyde Wilcox, editors
Understanding Public Opinion (3rd edition)
Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 2009


Phillip H. Pollock III
An SPSS Companion to Political Analysis (3rd edition)
Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2008
 

Access: As you will note, some of the articles included as required reading are available through sites that require a UF email address. If you're connected to the UF network, logging on via your Gatorlink ID, or working in a UF CIRCA data lab, you'll have the access automatically. Otherwise, there are two ways to fool the computer into thinking that you are working from a UF domain when you are somewhere else. Both are described on the UF Library's access page. The easiest is to use the Library's proxy server but this will require you to go to library home page, look up the journal in the index, find the article, and then download it. The VPN option is more complicated to install but once you have connected, any of the links on these pages should work just by clicking on them.

Schedule: The following is a tentative outline of the course.

Day
 Topic
 Readings
Overview
M
 August 24 - What is Survey Research?
W
 August 26 - Total Survey Error (TSE)
 Salant & Dillman, chs. 1-2
F
 August 28 - What do Surveys Measure?
 Zaller & Feldman, "A Simple Theory of the Survey Response" (Am. Journal of Political Science, 36:3 (1992), 579-616)
M-W
 Augt 31-Sept. 2 - Surveys vs. other techniques
 Hibbing, ch. 14 in Wilcox & Norrander
Hurwitz & Peffley "Playing the Race Card in the Post Willie Horton Era" (Public Opinion Quarterly, 69:1 (2005), 99-112)
F
 Sept. 4 - NO CLASS (APSA)
M
 Sept. 6 - NO CLASS (Labor Day)

Collecting Survey Data
W
 Sept. 9 - Survey Design Principles
 Salant & Dillman, chs. 3,11
F
 Sept. 11 - cont'd
M-W
 Sept. 14-16 - Survey Modes
 Salant & Dillman, ch. 4
Koch & Emrey, "The Internet & Surveying Marginalized Populations" (Social Science Quarterly, 82:1 (2001), 131-38)
F-W
 Sept. 18- Sept. 23 - Sampling
 Salant & Dillman, ch. 5
Keeter et al., "Reducing Nonresponse in a Natl. Telephone Survey" (POQ 64:2 (2000), 125-148)
F-F
 Sept. 25-Oct. 2 - Questions
 Salant & Dillman, ch. 6
Smith, "Welfare.by Any Other Name Would Smell Sweeter" (POQ 51:1 (1987), . 75-83)
Adamek, "Public Opinion and Roe v. Wade : Measurement Difficulties" (POQ 58:3 (1994), 409-418)
Schuman, "Ordinary Questions and Policy Questions" (POQ 50:3 (1986), 429-53)

Sept. 28 - NO CLASS (Yom Kippur)
M-W
 Oct 5-7 - Social Desirability
 Javeline, "Response Effects in Polite Cultures" (POQ 63:1 (1999), 1-28)
Finkel et al., "Race of Interviewer Effects in a Pre-Election Poll" (POQ 55:3 (1991), . 313-30
Taylor et al., "Best Foot Forward"
F
 Oct. 9 - Questionnaire Design
 Salant & Dillman, ch. 7
Dillman & Bowker, "The Web Questionnaire"
M
 Oct. 12 - Implementation
 Salant & Dillman, ch. 8
W
 Oct. 14- Reporting Survey Results Salant & Dillman, ch. 10
F
 Oct. 16 - MIDTERM EXAM
Analyzing Survey Data
M-W
 Oct.19-21 - Data Entry & Codebooks
 Pollock, ch. 1
Salant & Dillman, ch. 9
F
 Oct. 23 - Describing/Transforming Data
 Pollock, ch. 2-3
M
 Oct. 26 - Comparisons
 Pollock, chs. 4-5
W
 Oct. 28 - Inferential Statistics
 Pollock, ch. 6
F-W
 Oct.30 - Nov 4 - Measures of Association
Pollock, ch. 7
F-M
 Nov.6-9 - Multivariate Analysis
 Pollock, ch. 8

Interpreting Survey Data
Make sure & bring the Norrander & Wilcox book to class with you!
W, F
 Nov. 9, 13 - Interpreting a Simple Table
 Norrander & Wilcox, ch. 8, Appendix (257-268)
W
 Nov. 11 - NO CLASS (Veterans Day)
M-F
 Nov. 16-20 - Bivariate Relationships
 Norrander & Wilcox, chs. 1-3, 6
M-W
 Nov. 23-25 Control Variables
 Norrander & Wilcox, ch 12
F
 Nov. 27 - NO CLASS (Thanksgiving)
M
 Nov. 30 - Trend Data
 Norrander & Wilcox, ch 4, 5, 7, 9
W-F
 Nov. 25-Dec. 4 - Multivariate Analysis
 Norrander & Wilcox, ch. 10-11
M
 Dec. 7 - Catch  Up

W
 Dec. 9 - Review