What are the Different Kinds of Surveys? [ Types, Methods ]

What is a survey? Well, a survey is an act of collecting information about a certain topic and using the information to answer a question relevant to the purpose of the survey. A survey is an effective means of gathering information that would otherwise be inaccessible to a researcher, this is done by using several sources of information such as from books, journals, articles and most importantly personal interviews of the respondents of the survey.

A survey is typically linked to having a type of survey questionnaire or form and creating a survey form can be confusing especially if you do not know what type of information you are searching for in the first place. A key factor of a survey would be your purpose for conducting the survey.

The 3 Basic Types of Descriptive Research Methods

When conducting a research of any form you will in one way or another begin to use one of the three basic types of descriptive methods. Each method has its fair share of strengths and weaknesses and each one has their own methodology. These three research methods being:

• The Observational Method
  • In this type of research method, a more documentary approach is used when gathering information. By documentary, it means that the person will only observe the surrounding area without affecting the subjects in any way.
    This type of research methodology is typically done in two ways, in a controlled laboratory like area, or in an uncontrolled environment where the one involving an uncontrolled environment is better in terms of gathering more accurate data but is typically more costly than gathering data from a controlled environment.
• The Case Study Method
  • A case study has some similarity with the survey method in the sense that both methods gather data using several sources such as from books, journals, and articles. And it has some similarities to the observational method where the researcher will not interfere with people directly in any form.
• The Survey Method
  • The survey form is the most common of the three basic types of descriptive research methods. It is well used because of the amount of data that the researcher can gather from each survey. This is done by interacting with large numbers of respondents as well as researching from other sources.
    However, although it has access to more data not all of it could be relevant to the research there are tendencies that the respondents may write something that is not related to the topic at all.
    One example of the forms that the survey method would use is Satisfaction Survey Forms. Although any type of Survey Forms in Word format is good enough for a survey you must keep in mind its purpose.

What are the Different Methods Used in Conducting a Survey?

When conducting a survey of any type it is usually important to take note of the approach being used. The most common of which would be to pass survey questionnaires or the quantitative approach to gathering data around your targeted respondents this will ensure that the data will be related to the research in some way.

The other method of conducting a survey would be to go for the qualitative type of survey where you will interview key members of the survey relevant to your research. Regardless of which method you will use to conduct the survey, you must use some forms to make your surveys more attractive to the respondents. Survey forms like Market Survey Forms, Employer Survey Forms, Student Survey Forms are survey examples where each survey form has a specific target.