Return to Surveys at OSR

Responsibilities to the Discipline

An important aspect of the Office for Survey Research (OSR) at Michigan State University's Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) mission is not only to use the highest standards when conducting survey research, but also to advance those standards (i.e. to discover more about sound survey design and implementation). On any survey it conducts, OSR strives to make use of survey designs, sampling procedures, questionnaire forms, or administrative procedures that other research has demonstrated to be most effective, reliable, and valid. That is, each study benefits in its overall execution from the methodological experiments that have been built into previous surveys. OSR believes that each study's methodological debt to previous research obligates it to contribute where possible to the body of methodological knowledge. Therefore, OSR conducts methodological experiments where feasible without risking data quality as a part of survey projects.

These methodological experiments will focus on issues where debate or controversy makes the standards of quality open to question or where innovative ideas have the potential to improve survey results. Experiments may concern, but are not limited to, such issues as alternate wordings of questions, question order, response order, respondent selection techniques, sampling techniques, notification techniques and timing, refusal conversion techniques, questionnaire designs, cover letter appeals, follow-up techniques, and distribution techniques. Such experiments will always be incorporated in consultation with the Client/Principal Investigator and will most certainly be intended to improve survey response rather than to jeopardize it.