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Personal Interview Surveys
Sample Selection

Journalist 1 & C - Advanced manual for Journalism and other reporting practices
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Figure 9-1.—Mail survey response rate progression. this would be surveys mailed out to 400 members of your base with 59 of those surveys having been mailed, by chance, to the Marines. You do follow-up mailings to  the  original  individuals  selected  that  have  not  turned in their responses and still only the Marines remain in the category of those who have returned 100 percent of their  surveys.  If  you  have  randomly  selected  your sample size, sending more surveys to the Marines might be  appealing,  but  it  will  mean  a  disproportionate (biased) number of Marine opinions will then be in your survey. You should do one or more of the following: forward  a  follow-up  notice;  send  second  survey mailings  to  the  chosen  respondents;  conduct  telephone interviews;   or   in   rare   cases,   conduct   face-to-face interviews of those few random sample selectees who have  not  yet  answered  their  questionnaires.  Remember, keep your follow-up attempts based on your original randomly  selected  individuals. 5. Make sure the purpose of the survey is clearly stated and that each respondent has been selected by a random method and will not by any chance have his or her identity released. Then make sure you follow through with that promise. (Remember,  credibility  is paramount.) 6. Put some authority behind the cover letter to the survey. Getting the CO to sign it helps immensely. DEVELOPMENT  OF  SURVEYS Learning  Objective:  Identify the concept of audience survey   development. Now that you have an idea of what a survey can do for you and what types of surveys are available, the next step  for  you  is  to  understand  the  components  and strategies  involved  with  producing  a  valid  and statistically  reliable  survey. GETTING  STARTED Beginning a survey project is much like beginning a story. First you should know why you are doing it. Essentially,  what  information  are  you  looking  for  that can only be found by doing a formal survey? After you have  decided  that  the  information  cannot  be  attained through  any  previously  collected  data  source,  you should begin thinking about survey production. The following is a list of questions that must be answered before you start your survey research project: l l l l l Who are the people you are going to survey? “Know your audience” is a phrase that keeps coming up. Will you try to survey all the people (called  the  population)  in  your  audience? If you are going to use a sample of the general population,  how will this sample be chosen and how large will it be? What method of distribution will you use? The four  possibilities  are  mail,  telephone,  interview or a combination of the three. What type of question format will you use? Are open-ended,  close-ended  or  a  combination  of both  called  for? How  will  the  data  be  tabulated?  If at all possible,  place  your  survey  responses  on  a computer. This might entail asking some local computer hackers for help if none of your staff has this talent, but seeking assistance will be worth it. 9-5







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