Introduction to Survey Quality: 329

Issues of survey quality have become increasingly more prominent in recent years. As more and more professionals who are not necessarily trained as survey researchers take on tasks associated with surveys, the need arises for a grounded, basic introduction to current survey methods and quality issues associated with them.

Introduction to Survey Quality summarizes the history of survey research and outlines the essential concepts for data quality. With an emphasis on total survey error, authors Paul Biemer and Lars Lyberg review well-established, as well as recently developed principles and concepts in the field, and examine important issues that are still unresolved and being actively pursued in the current survey methods literature. Spanning a range of topics dealing with the quality of data collected through the survey process, they focus on such key issues as:

• Major sources of survey error, examining the origins of each error source and the most successful methods for reducing errors from those sources
• Methods most often used in practice for evaluating the effects of the source on total survey error
• Implications of improving survey quality for organizational management and cost

Introduction to Survey Quality is written for a broad audience that includes experienced survey researchers who would benefit from a better understanding of survey data quality as well as others with little or no prior training in survey methods. It is both a useful road map to the issues of survey measurement encountered in survey work and an essential guide to practical methods for improving the quality of survey data.