Seymour Sudman

In this important book, the authors explore what answers mean in relation to how people understand the world around them and communicate with one another. They offer practical and theoretical insights that will prove invaluable when developing questionnaires.

Since it was first published more than twenty-five years ago, Asking Questions has become a classic guide for designing questionnaires¾the most widely used method for collecting information about people’s attitudes and behavior. An essential tool for market researchers advertisers, pollsters, and social scientists, this thoroughly updated and definitive work combines time-proven techniques with the most current research, findings, and methods. The book presents a cognitive approach to questionnaire design and includes timely information on the Internet and electronic resources. Comprehensive and concise, Asking Questions can be used to design questionnaires for any subject area, whether administered by telephone, online, mail, in groups, or face-to-face. The book describes the design process from start to finish and is filled with illustrative examples from actual surveys

Explains how polls are conducted, describes the causes of polling errors, and discusses how polls are used and interpreted.