Survey Method
One of the most direct ways to obtain information that will allow us to describe human behaviior or mental processes is simply to ask people questions. This approach is called the vey method. Surveys are perhaps most widely used today by psychologists who want describe people's opinions about television programs. soft dtinks, political candidates. d similar subjects. Surveys are frequently used for other purposes as well. For example. e myth-shattering surveys of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey (Kinsey. Pomeroy. & Martin. 9-+8) revealed that the number of people who engaged in masturbation was much higher the general population than expected at the time.
A survey conducted by a group of researchers at the National Institute of Mental health (Kasper, Wehr, Bartko. Gaist, & Rosenthal. 1989) provides another excellent example of the use of the survey method in psychology. They were interested in describing ariations in people's moods. Are you more likely to have bad moods during certain times - the year? Do they occur during the winter? A lot has been written in the popular press ut "winter blahs" and "cabin fever"-periods of depression experienced during the hart, cold days of the winter-but. until recently. there was little hard evidence to support his idea. These researchers conducted a random telephone survey of 416 persons living in .Iaryland and Virginia. They asked an adult in each household to name the month during 'hich they "felt worst" during the past year. There was a strong tendency for the winter months. particularly January and February. to be the ':mes people reported that they felt worst. The moods tend to be worse when the temperature is the lowest and the number of mjnutes of sunlight each day is the shortest. Keep in mind as you read about this study that it does not imply that everyne feels depressed during the winter. It simply suggests that more people feel lousy dur~g the winter than during the summer.
The primary advantage of the survey method is that you can gather a great deal of information in a relatively short period of time. The main disadvantage is that the accuracy of information obtained in surveys may be questionable. You cannot always be sure that the answers are honest, especially to questions about such sensitive topics as sex and drug use. In addition, a number of very subtle factors have been found to influence the results of sur'eys. for example, people are more likely to endorse feminist views when the interviewer is a woman than a man (Huddy, Billig, Bracciodieta, Heoffler, Moynihan, & Pugliani, 1997). In addition, subtle differences in how questions are worded can influence answers (Waenke, Schwarz, & Noelle-Neumann, 1995: Schwarz, 1999). This does not mean that surveys are not valuable, but, like all other methods of research, we must consider the finding of surveys very carefully.
