The Ethical Aspects of Surveys and Statistics
Statistics and Data Interpretation
Jasmaine Tate
Cardinal Stritch University
Introduction
Surveys are conducted to evaluate how a large or small amount of people feel about different subjects. Surveys can be administered in a few different ways. Surveys can be conducted in person or online. Surveys can be conducted at school, work, home, etc. Surveys can be used for good, but some people use surveys in unethical ways. The three main surveys are case study, sampled, and census.
Case Study, Sampled, and Census Surveys
Case study surveys collect information from a part of a group or community, without trying to choose them for overall representation of the larger population. You may need to conduct several of these before you get a sense of how the larger community would respond to your survey (Hampton & Vilela). Educational evaluation is one topic that uses case study surveys to make an educated guess of how education will change over time. Being that case study surveys are used to understand how an entire community feels about a subject, making sure to have responses from a mix of people in the community would be best. Surveying a group of individual who may be friends and share the same values will not give accurate results of how the community feels about the survey topic. Some surveyors select only a certain type of people to survey so their results satisfy them. This is unethical and unfair to citizens who rely on surveys to estimate change, progress, or the future.
Sampled surveys ask a sample portion of a group to answer your questions. If done well, the results for the sample will reflect the results you would have gotten by surveying the entire group. (Hampton &...
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...ings in different places and areas. Surveys allow respondents to be anonymous and this is why surveys are usually successful in analyzing certain subjects. While surveys can be used for good, some people can use it in an unethical way, if a sponsor has wrong intentions when administering the survey.
References
Hampton, C., & Vilela, M. (n.d.). Community toolbox: Conducting surveys. Retrieved from http://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/assessment/assessing-community-needs-and-resources/conduct-surveys/main
Levine, D., Krehbiel, T., & Berenson, M. (2010). Business statistics: A first course. (5 ed., pp. 215-217). New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Survey methods. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.oesr.qld.gov.au/about-statistics/survey-methods
What is measurement error? (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/measurement-error.html
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Two sampling methods include mail surveys and convenience sampling, a variation of a nonprobability sample. Mail surveys, inexpensive way to contact individuals over a large geographical area, provide anonymity to the respondent, and eliminate interview bias. Convenience sampling, a nonprobability sample, the only criteria is the convenience of the unit to the researcher, fast and uncomplicated, but the sampling error not determined.
ee, searching for a ‘perfect’ love has never mattered to me. It’s never been about someone who would match this silly list of criteria or be exactly who I always dreamed of. I haven’t spent my life wishing for a prince or a man to save me. I haven’t hoped that I’d find this ideal man who could have all the answers and never leave me wondering.
I believe the results of this survey to be accurate as the survey was conducted in a fair and professional manner. However, I also discovered how easy it can be to manipulate the data and the opinions of participants to favor a single viewpoint. Surveys are an important method of gathering, summarizing and presenting large amounts of data. However, when relying on polls to form opinions or make decisions, people should consider the source, look for any conflicts of interest, contemplate other avenues of information and draw their own conclusions.
For future research it would help if the sample size was larger because not many people participated in the survey.
A total of 39 surveys were unusable because of partial responses or abandoned surveys. The final number of 104 participants was usable
...king it quicker for the subjects using their time to fill it out. I got a little confused during my initial calculating of the surveys due to the amount of questions and the different age groups I split each survey up in.
A researcher determines that 42.7% of all downtown office buildings have ventilation problems. Is this a statistic or a parameter; explain your answer.
indicates towards a fraud. On eof the most important qualities or benefits of this model is that it understands the pattern in the data and generates the result. Once the result is generated the model checks as to how close was the result from the actual results. Based on this analysis the model adjusts its weights to give an accurate result the next time. Once this model has been trained to give accurate results, it can be used to analyze other data as well. Even when Neural Networks are widely accepted, they are not really used that much in the marketing industry merely by the fact that data preparation for this model is very complex time consuming as compared to the Regression Analysis. The marketers are much comfortable using the Regression Analysis over Neural Networks because of the ease of interpreting the results in the Regression Analysis.
Kelley, K et al. (2003). Good practice in the conduct and reporting of survey research. Oxford Journal. 15 (3): 261-266.
Focusing on surveys and questionnaires, and quantitative research methods, it varies on the person getting questioned as to which method they prefer. Some individuals may prefer to fill in a questionnaire, as it is quick and simple for them, whereas someone else would rather have a face-to-face interview because they may find questionnaires to complicated. Giving people the choice gives the more chance of getting a response overall. It is important that the researchers are aware of the advantages and disadvantages because they will then be aware of what method to use, and will know what method is best to use. It is also an advantage to work with experienced researchers in order to find out the best results.
Data Collection and Analysis Questionnaire The research was carried out on both quantitative and qualitative approaches. It began with a quantitative approach—questionnaire. Bryman and Bell (2003) asserted that mail or postal questionnaires are the most popular forms of questionnaires. Another form—self-completion questionnaire—was also common because of the overlap with postal questionnaire to some extent.
Sloman, J., Hinde, K. and Garratt D. (2013) Economics for Business, 6th ed., Prentice Hall / Pearson,
The Advantages and Limitations of Social Surveys in Sociological Research To survey something, is to carry out a systematic overview so that a researcher can produce a comprehensive general report on it. Survey method is often used by positivist sociologists seeking to test their hypotheses, and to investigate causes and examine variables. As with every other sociological research, survey has its own advantages and limitations. Positivist research, which is in the scientific tradition, begins with a hypothesis that can be either confirmed or rejected according to the data collected. One of the significant advantages of survey method is that, it can be used to collect data that is a representative of a larger population.
The Collier Encyclopedia’s definition for probability is the concern for events that are not certain and the reasonableness of one expectation over another. These expectations are usually based on some facts about past events or what is known as statistics. Collier describes statistics to be the science of the classification and manipulation of data in order to draw inferences. Inferences here can be read to mean expectations, leading to the conclusion that the two go hand in hand in accomplishing what mankind has tried to accomplish since the beginning of time – predicting the future. It is the notion of science that this is the most accurate way to predict events yet to occur and this has lead to it being the most widely accepted “fortune telling'; tool in the world today.
Sampling is the act of choosing a smaller, more manageable subset of the objects or members of a population to include in an investigation in order to study with greater ease something about that population. In other words, sampling allows researchers to select a subset of the objects or members of a population to represent the total population. Sampling is used in language research when the objects or members (hereafter simply objects or members, but not both) of a population are so numerous that investigating all of them would be unwieldy. Quantitative researchers use both probability and non-probability sample but rely more on probability because of its generalisability. In choosing sampling methods, considerations need to be made for the objective of the research, the resources available, the population and the legal and ethical requirements.