ASA at 175 - Surveys, and the Survey Review Committee
By Ronald Wasserstein - February 56, 2014
Perhaps the riskiest thing we do at the ASA Office is send out surveys to our members. Good survey design and methodology require specific skills. Many of our members have those skills, and don’t mind telling us when they think our surveys could be better. Of course, surveys can always be better!
In this blog I will tell you about some of the ways the ASA collects information via surveys, and a specific process we use to continually improve our surveying.
We’ll take as a given that the ASA should be an especially data-driven organization. Here are the surveys in which the ASA Office is directly involved:
- In conjunction with the Caucus of Academic Reps, we survey academic departments of statistics and biostatistics for basic information about staff size, number of graduates at various levels, and so on.
- On behalf of the profession, we also survey a broad range of academic departments in which statisticians/biostatisticians are employed to obtain information about salaries. This information is published in Amstat News (see, for example, the January and February 2014 issues), and provides useful information to departments as they hire or make other personnel decisions.
- Every other year, in conjunction with the ASA’s Committee on Statistical Partnerships among Academe, Industry, and Government (SPAIG), we survey business, industry, and government statisticians for salary information, and publish these results in Amstat News as well. (See November 2013, for example.)
- In years divisible by five, we join the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences in a survey of undergraduate mathematical and statistical sciences programs to provide information about enrollments, curricula, and much more.
- We partner with other mathematical and statistical societies in a committee to collect data on trends in the mathematical and statistical sciences, particularly but not exclusively at the graduate level.
- Each year, we survey participants in the Joint Statistical Meetings, the Conference on Statistical Practice, the FDA/Industry Statistics Workshop, and other ASA meetings about their experiences and needs.
- We survey members on an occasional basis about such things as journal preferences and readership, satisfaction with or potential interest in certain ASA products and services, reasons for lapsed membership, and more.
This information provides important context not only for the ASA Office and ASA members, but also for the entire profession.
Any survey that goes out to ASA membership passes through the Survey Review Committee (SRC). The Survey Review Committee (SRC) reviews proposed surveys of ASA membership, as well as other surveys sponsored by ASA committees and sections. The SRC is charged with ensuring that proposed surveys and survey designs achieve their intended goals, meet usually accepted standards of survey methods, and minimize measurement error, nonresponse and respondent burden.
The entity proposing the survey must complete a form that describes the purposes of the survey, the target population, the sampling methodology, data collection procedures, confidentiality disclosure, and more. In addition a draft version of the survey should be submitted in the intended format (or at the very least as an electronic document file). This submission gives the SRC committee the full opportunity to review and in many instances provide guidance on question wording, skip logic, instructions and other aspects of your survey. We can all agree that statistical guidance at the planning phase of the study is a best practice. And so it is here as well. The Survey Review Committee can offer great insights and provide key recommendations on your questionnaire design, content and other survey methods before you field the survey to ensure the best overall experience for both the data collectors as well as the respondents – who are members of our beloved association.
Right now I am working on a survey of a portion of ASA membership to learn some things that will guide future fundraising and development efforts. I’ve submitted the form and supporting materials to the SRC, and look forward to their feedback. Still, the survey won’t be perfect, so if you are surveyed, please be kind and respond anyway.
In 2014, the American Statistical Association is celebrating its 175th anniversary. Over the course of this year, this blog will highlight aspects of that celebration, and look broadly at the ASA and its activities. Please contact ASA Executive Director Ron Wasserstein (ron@amstat.org) if you would like to post an entry to this blog.