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Using Student Surveys: Suggested Strategies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 May 2020

Steve Frank*
Affiliation:
St. Cloud State College

Extract

Student run survey projects are recommended in the instructor's manuals of many introductory American National Government texts. However, the suggested exercises are for non-random student surveys and/or contain few, if any instructions. James Bindley's instructor's manual for Burnham's Democracy In the Making, 2nd Ed. is typical when he writes:

Have your students conduct a poll. If they can go out in the community, the experience is valuable. Even a campus poll can be meaningful, particularly if you utilize actual questions from a national survey to enable your students to compare and contrast local student opinions with the national norms.

In the Summer, 1980 edition of News John Seltz described in “Public Opinion: Polling and Data Analysis,” his experiences using personal surveys developed and carried out by his Presidency and Congress courses. He contended that such exercises provided many benefits to students, especially in upper level undergraduate courses.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1987

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References

Notes

1 Bindley, James H.Instructor's Manual for Democracy in the Making, 2nd. Ed. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1986. p.56.Google Scholar

2 Seitz, John L.Public Opinion: Polling and Data Analysis.News for Teachers of Political Science, No. 26, Summer 1980, p.4.Google Scholar

3 Trodahl, Verling C. and Carter, Roy C, “Random Selection of Respondents Within Households.Journal of Marketing Research 1, 1964, pp. 7176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Hagen, Dan E. and Collar, Charlotte M., “Must Respondent Selection Procedures for Telephone Surveys Be Intrusive.Public Opinion Quarterly 47, 1983, pp. 547556.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Backstrom, Charles H. and Hursh-Cesar, Gerald. Survey Research 2nd. Ed. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1981, pp. 1124.Google Scholar