In the upstairs-downstairs world of the major research university, faculty and staff don’t often meet in classrooms. But research professors at the Institute for Social Research (ISR) are changing that by leading a weekly lecture series designed to broaden the knowledge and skills of staff at the recently reorganized Survey Research Operations (SRO) unit and the larger institute.
More than 100 ISR employees have attended each session, starting with the Nov. 12 introduction by sociology professor and ISR Survey Research Center director Robert Groves. In the second lecture, Groves offered a litany of the many different types of errors that bedevil even the best surveys. “Survey methodologists focus on weaknesses in surveys, attempting to understand their causes and reduce their magnitude,” he said. Despite the inevitability of error, Groves emphasized that carefully designed, conducted and analyzed surveys remain uniquely informative tools for describing the world.
“I’ve taken survey methods classes before, but this is a chance to hear directly from the guys who write the books,” said Debbie Carr, an SRO survey manager.
At the third talk, biostatistician James Lepkowski, who directs the Michigan Program in Survey Methodology, provided a hands-on lesson in random sampling by asking 30 staff members to reach into a large jar of multi-colored M&Ms, pull out 20 pieces, then write down the number of blue M&Ms.
At this week’s lecture, Lepkowski will analyze the results, then pass the jar around so staff members can sample the target population of approximately 1,300 M&Ms—about the number of individuals interviewed in national surveys of a random representative sample of the U.S. population.
The Survey Research Center started the classes to help staff keep up with the rapid rate of change in the methods of conducting surveys.
