This graduate-level course aims to integrate theories and practices in survey methods and data management. To meet the academic requirement of quantitative research works, it is oriented towards improving students’ ability in transforming premature ideas and questions into solid research articles or theses that are theoretically informed and methodologically sound. Therefore, students are required to conduct a project-based research as final report.

This course is about survey data and where they come from. We will examine the principal features of survey design and how they contribute to total survey error. Topics include: mode of interview, basic sampling concepts and framework, effects of nonparticipation, issues in instrumentation, interviewing, computer assisted data collection, data coding and management, data bank, etc. Although this course considers issues that arise before analysis of data begins, some course assignments, particularly those about sampling, require some comfort with elementary statistical concepts and formulas.