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Survey methods.

Article Excerpt
Two research articles in this issue used surveys to collect data to answer their research questions. Suitable for many purposes, surveys are being employed with increasing frequency mainly due to the ease of using computerized surveys. Many readers may have created surveys in the work setting for quality improvement purposes, but not all surveys yield the intended results because of poor development. In this roundtable, I will discuss some basic principles of effective survey method research.

What Are Surveys?

A survey is a system to collect information to describe, compare, or explain knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors (Fink, 1995). A survey is different than a scale, which measures one particular concept or variable of interest in a study. Usually a scale measures a relatively abstract concept, such as self-efficacy, job satisfaction, depression, and maternal-child attachment (DeVellis, 2003). A scale often has a total score in which all the items are added to provide a measure of the level of that variable for the person completing the scale. For example, a subject in a study might have a high or low level of self-efficacy.

A survey might include a scale, but usually a survey collects information on knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors on varied but related topics. Usually the items are not added to provide a total score, although that might be possible with subsections. Fowler, Sohler, and Zarillo (2009) used a survey to measure satisfaction with a new medication administration system. Because each item on the survey asked a question about nurse satisfaction with an aspect of the new system, each item was examined individually and not added together to give a score. Lewthwaite (2009) used a survey that had been...

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