Designing and Conducting Business Surveys (eBook)

Designing and Conducting Business Surveys provides a
coherent overview of the business survey process, from start to
finish. It uniquely integrates an understanding of how businesses
operate, a total survey error approach to data quality that focuses
specifically on business surveys, and sound project management
principles. The book brings together what is currently known about
planning, designing, and conducting business surveys, with
producing and disseminating statistics or other research results
from the collected data. This knowledge draws upon a variety of
disciplines such as survey methodology, organizational sciences,
sociology, psychology, and statistical methods. The contents of the
book formulate a comprehensive guide to scholarly material
previously dispersed among books, journal articles, and conference
papers.

This book provides guidelines that will help the reader make
educated trade-off decisions that minimize survey errors, costs,
and response burden, while being attentive to survey data quality.
Major topics include:

* Determining the survey content, considering user needs,
the business context, and total survey quality

* Planning the survey as a project

* Sampling frames, procedures, and methods

* Questionnaire design and testing for self-administered
paper, web, and mixed-mode surveys

* Survey communication design to obtain responses and
facilitate the business response process

* Conducting and managing the survey using paradata and
project management tools

* Data processing, including capture, editing, and
imputation, and dissemination of statistical outputs

Designing and Conducting Business Surveys is an
indispensable resource for anyone involved in designing and/or
conducting business or organizational surveys at statistical
institutes, central banks, survey organizations, etc.; producing
statistics or other research results from business surveys at
universities, research organizations, etc.; or using data produced
from business surveys. The book also lays a foundation for new
areas of research in business surveys.