Social Surveys

• These are often research projects that involved collecting data about large numbers of people.

• Social surveys can be done by (open) unstructured interviews or observation but the most common form is by questionnaires.

The aims of social surveys

• To find out facts about people

• To uncover differences in society’s beliefs, values and behaviours

• To test (disprove or prove) hypothesis

British Crime Survey (BCS) is a form of social survey, conducted every two years with aims to find out about peoples’ experiences of becoming victims of crimes.

There are three types of factual social surveys (Ackroyd and Hughes, 1981):

• Factual Survey: is use to gather descriptive information, hence, the government census can be regarded as a factual survey.

• Attitude Survey: is used in the form of opinion polls. The main focus of this type of survey is this aimed to collect individuals’ subjective states.

• Explanatory survey: is used when surveys were aimed for testing theories in order to falsify or produce new theories.