Our Services

 

Consultation

Staff members of the Survey Research Center are available to meet with students, faculty, and administrators who are planning to conduct survey research projects. At the design stage, this requires consideration of alternative study plans, definition of a study population, selection of appropriate sampling methods and data collection techniques, and design of survey questionnaires, sample weights, and data analysis plans. For projects that require large-scale data collection or specific expertise, the SRC can connect researchers to a network of on-campus and off-campus resources that offer specialized capabilities such as high-volume printing and mailing, large-scale telephone interviewing, or respondent locating for longitudinal studies.

Education 

The SRC Executive Director teaches a graduate seminar on survey research methods at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPI 593e). The course teaches state-of-the-art survey methods and covers topics such as designing and managing surveys in developing nations and in areas of civil or military conflict; writing good questionnaires, designing representative samples, and calculating sample weights; how to become a skilled interviewer; pre-election polling; survey research and artificial intelligence (AI); and the decennial census and federal surveys that provide essential information for policymakers, planners, and legislators.

For the larger Princeton University community, we regularly invite Princeton area survey researchers as well as scholars from other institutions to give public lectures on their work.

Project Management 

For survey projects conducted at the Center, the SRC provides web survey programming, project management, telephone and field interviewer training and supervision, assistance with data processing, and calculation of sample weights. For survey projects that are subcontracted to outside firms, the SRC provides off-site project monitoring, interviewer training, and assistance with data processing and analysis. Faculty, staff, and students are encouraged to use our Qualtrics® web survey utility for conducting their own data collection projects.