The course will also show how research informs and improves questionnaire design and discuss examples that illustrate how to analyze the issues that arise in writing questions for standardized surveys. This course focuses on the management of the various stages of a survey, from the initial planning to the final data file construction and report writing. This is a foundation course in sampling methods for survey research. It presents, in a non-technical manner, basic sampling techniques such a simple random sampling, systematic sampling, stratification, cluster sampling, and probability proportional to size selection. Opportunities to implement sampling techniques are provided by a series of exercises that accompany each topic.
Group work is an integral part of the course.
This short course provides an introductory exposure to producing estimates of population parameters from sample surveys. It treats concepts of uncertainty due to sampling, through presentation of how sampling errors of survey statistics vary as a function of sample design. It presents the basic tools of computing descriptive statistics like means, percentages, and population totals from sample surveys. It examines statistical procedures used in comparing subgroups on attributes measured in the survey. It treats inferential issues in moving from sample-based statistics to describing the target population of the survey.