Surveys as Social Interactions

• Activity Number: 515
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Sirken Award
• Author(s): Norman M. Bradburn*
• Companies: NORC at the University of Chicago

Abstract

Over the past 25 years great strides have been made in understanding the cognitive processes that respondents go through in understanding and responding to surveys. The research emphasis has been on respondents and their comprehension of questions, their memory processes and their formulation of answers to the questions. Today the challenges confronting the survey researcher are dominated by the difficulty in locating sample persons and getting them to respond at all. Thus research emphasis is shifting from a concern for individual cognition to a concern for the social milieu in which the potential respondents live and for the changing modes of communication by which they are contacted. Without ignoring cognitive aspects of survey methodology we must now concentrate on the social psychological underpinnings of survey responding. This is best done by analyzing surveys as a special type of social interaction.