Writing Questions for Undergrads, not Professionals
Written: Apr 08 '08 (Updated Apr 08 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Covers basic problems of survey writing
Cons: Poorly designed, cannot be used as a reference, shallow
The Bottom Line: If you have little understanding of survey writing - this is a decent start, if you know what you do and want to do it better - get something else.
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| rabodzey's Full Review: Ian Brace - Questionnaire Design: How To Plan, Str... |
Hi there, Epinions Community, haven's written a while, been busy, but now, I'll get them with my axe!
Due to the nature of my work, I wanted to catch up on questionnaire writing skills. I wanted some kind of a book that would get me up to speed and propel somewhat further. Questionnaire Design by Ian Brace was claimed to be something like that by Amazon.com. This is partially true: I got up to speed, but the book fails to propel much further...
The Book
This is a standard 300-page (seems like all books have to be 300 pages long) book written by TNS UK director in 2004 and reprinted multiple times since then. Recommended price is $39.99, but I got it for $19.99 which is way closer to its actual value. This book includes a fancy CD that contains some promotional materials that you won't really need. Throughout the body of the text you may find few illustrations, but overall focus is on the text. Target audience spelled at the back: "...advanced undergraduate and graduate students alike." I have no clue what is an "advanced undergraduate", but I can tell you that it is nowhere close to be a reference book for graduate.
What Sucks?
1) The book may not be used as a good reference source. I expected it to be something I could refer to when I have questions on how to phrase a question in such a way as to minimize bias and maximize response rate... Although book touches on both of these issues, it does so in a narrative manner in various places throughout the 300-page body making it hard to find.
2) There is not so much questionnaire design there...
This is really a low point of this book named "Questionnaire Design" - you get some VERY basic principles like balanced scale, Likert scale and so forth, but do not expect to hear much about Conjoint analysis, Bayesian methods and MaxDiff. Unfortunately this is beyond the scope of this book.
3) Poor Organization.
What I always fail to understand is how come every time I pick up a book on organization it is always poorly organized? I do not really ask for much there, just make it simple to follow, easy to find and try to present exhaustive list of things you cover. Everybody has list of contents, many even have index, but THIS IS NOT ORGANIZATION YET! I want to be able to find an answer to my questions as easy as I can do in "Say it with Presentations" by Zelazny. It's got half the size, but is way more useful as a reference. Brace's book has to be read in order to be understood. Well, not everybody has time nowadays, many people want to GET ANSWER NOW!
The Good Side
All of that criticism does not mean book is worthless. You will find some interesting examples there and some anecdotes that make it interesting to read sometimes. Should you ruin your day on them? Not really, everything he says could have been compressed in 20 pages outline easily.
One more good thing is that the book covers major areas of survey writing - a bit of psychology of respondents, some social biases and ways to overcome them, a bit survey planning and questions types, a lot in appendix...
Still, if you have little idea about survey writing - this is a decent start. If you have an idea and want to improve your methods... this is probably not a good choice.
Conclusion
If you have little understanding of survey writing - this is a decent start, if you know what you do and want to do it better - get something else.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
rabodzey
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Member: Alex
Location: Cambridge, MA, USA
Reviews written: 68
Trusted by: 19 members
About Me:
I enjoy writing essays on various topics, especially if it helps people.
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