Types of Surveys

Surveys are data collection techniques that are used for various purposes (political-electoral, economic, commercial, opinion, etc.), they are carried out by preparing certain questionnaires, (either written or verbal), in these questionnaires there are several standardized questions that are asked of a group of people who are representative of a social or economic sector, to determine certain aptitudes, opinions, tastes, preferences, needs, priorities, etc. They are widely used by companies as a marketing strategy, by public and private institutions, by political parties and by companies specializing in their implementation, among others. Surveys can be classified by the way they are carried out (personal, telephone, etc.), by the objectives to which they are focused,

The types of surveys are:

Surveys according to the type of response they allow:

There are two main types of surveys depending on whether or not they are allowed to respond more broadly to the questions of the questionnaire or whether they are made in such a way that the answers are pre-established in “boxes”, (standardized answers).

Free-response surveys.- These are those in which the respondent is free to state their response and opinions on the matter.

Variable response surveys.- They are those where there is a form with several response options, which, although they may or may not allow the implementation of “personalized” responses, are usually rigid in the structuring of responses.

Types of surveys according to the means used to carry them out:

Personal surveys.- These are surveys carried out by the survey staff directly with the respondent, asking the questions of the questionnaire with which the survey is carried out, they are usually more accurate and reliable than those carried out by telephone and other means, as well as having a longer duration. Usually in this type of survey, the respondent can have a certain range or width of space within the questions of the same, as well as obtain help from the interviewer to understand some detail that could not have been fully captured, which when solving questions of the respondent, allows their responses to be more detailed and have a greater “impact” for the ultimate purpose for which the survey is conducted.

Telephone surveys.- They have a narrower range than the previous one, in terms of the number of people and economic position that they can cover, since they are limited to people who have a telephone service. It consists of an interview or telephone questionnaire, with which the survey aims to obtain certain information from a specific social sector, (for example in the case of a socioeconomic sector, when it is the case of a commercial company that is interested in knowing the needs of possible clients ).

Surveys by mail.-This type of survey uses the sending of forms with standardized questions referring to the topic or topics of relevance to the survey, concerning economic data, health, education, political or religious preference, etc., obviously depending on the interests that move to said survey (commercial interests, opinion polls, or others). They have the advantage that the respondent is not “pressured” by the presence of the interviewer or by the time to carry it out (because there is usually enough time to carry it out). However, they frequently have the disadvantage that the possible answers are constrained by a standardization of the answers (answer “A”, answer “B” answer “C”, etc.), that is, they usually have multiple choice answers, which they may be limited.

Internet surveys.- They are one of the types of surveys, which are relatively more recent; These consist of placing questionnaires on the network, making them available to a certain number of users, either among the users of some web pages or by sending them to the emails of the users who are surveyed, usually they allow the person who is surveyed has a better disposition in terms of time to analyze and answer the questionnaire, also giving facilities such as being able to carry out said survey from home or workplace in a relatively comfortable way and without having the “pressure” that could be Produce with the interviewer in front of you.

Surveys according to the objective they have:

Descriptive surveys.- This type of survey seeks to obtain data that reflects the conditions (economic, school, socio-cultural, technological, access to services, and even intentions to purchase goods, etc.) that a certain sector of the population (population that, for example, can be a socioeconomic, territorial, or age sector), in a certain time, that is, they look for the description of the state of the surveyed population, understanding that it is in a time close to the date or dates close to its completion.

Analytical surveys.- In this type, in addition to obtaining data and describing a population, they seek to explain the reasons for the specific situations of the surveyed population, using hypotheses that are contrasted.

All these types of surveys can in turn be found within the group of surveys in which the respondent does not receive remuneration or (economic) compensation, or within those that provide economic remuneration as a form of compensation from the person surveyed, for the time you have used to carry out the survey. This is the case of several surveys via the Internet, in which an economic amount (generally small) is given to the person surveyed, or as in the cases of personal surveys that are carried out on the street or in the person’s home, in where the time used in the survey by the respondent is compensated, being remunerated with a certain economic amount in cash.