Survey Skills

Workshops

Survey Skills workshops are available at a nominal fee and open to researchers and others in research-related posts across a wide range of sectors.

Workshops are presented by leading academics and professional researchers from a range of organisations involved in developing and delivering high quality survey research. Each workshop involves a mixture of taught sessions, interactive exercises and group work. Workshops will run throughout the year at a number of venues including ESRC Regional Training Centres across the UK.

Taking part will:
  • increase understanding of survey research, including the resources available
  • build knowledge of the survey research process
  • develop new skills and competencies which can be applied to your own research and work, whether that is in academic research, central and local government, or the third sector
The workshops will be useful if you:
  • are new to applied social research, or about to embark on your first survey and would like to gain an insight into, and increase your knowledge of, survey research methods, processes and quality issues
  • are a PhD or postgraduate student who wants to better understand the survey process
  • commission or manage survey research in: central or local government; health or other public sector bodies; or the third sector (including charities and voluntary organisations), and need to use survey data including making judgments about quality
  • analyse survey datasets and wish to learn more about how survey data are collected and the strengths and limitations of such data
Learning objectives

Through participation in Survey Skills workshops, delegates will:

  • become capable of identifying and locating a variety of social surveys and understanding their content and population coverage
  • increase their knowledge about the range of survey resources available across the internet and have gained hands-on experience of navigating and using the Survey Question Bank resource
  • learn about the social survey lifecycle and be able to identify key stages in that process
  • become familiar with the range of methods used for collecting survey data from primary sources and the role of the interviewer
  • understand the processes and challenges involved in getting a survey into the field
  • become aware of the processes involved in cleaning datasets and preparing them for archiving, and of the range of datasets available through the internet, especially the UK Data Archive
  • become more confident in recognising the hallmarks of high quality in social survey research and understand how compromises in sampling, design or collection can impact upon the reliability and validity of findings
Topics covered will include:
  • web-based resources for survey research
    • Survey Resource Network - resources and activities available through the network
    • Survey Question Bank (SQB) - what is it, what does it offer, surveys in the SQB
    • UK Data Archive – what it is, what it offers, datasets in the archive
    • other resources
  • quality in survey research
    • what 'quality' is and how to ensure your survey is robust
  • into the field – making your survey operational
    • the role of the interviewer – getting across the doorstep
    • fieldwork related issues
  • surveys in focus
    • each workshop will include an afternoon session focusing on a specific survey
    • members of the survey team will provide an in-depth insight into the chosen survey, describing in detail the objectives, sampling and data collection methods
    • participants will be encouraged to explore the survey instrument, interviewing issues and consider specific methodological challenges (such as ethical considerations, question wording, etc)


Workshop timetable
Booking