The demise of the survey? A research note on trends in the use of survey data in the social sciences, 1939 to 2015

Patrick Sturgis,Rebekah Luff

doi:10.1080/13645579.2020.1844896

Abstract

ABSTRACT We assess the case for a decline in the use of survey data in the social sciences during a period in which conventional survey research has faced existential challenges to its ongoing feasibility and growing competition from new forms of ‘Big Data’. Presser (1983) and Converse (1987) undertook content analysis of articles published in a set of leading social science journals, finding a trend of increasing the use of survey data between 1939 and 1980. In an extension of Presser’s analysis to the mid-1990s, Saris and Gallhofer (2007) found a further small increase in the rate of survey use, though with notable variability across disciplines. We update these studies to include the period 2014 to 2015. While our analysis reveals the emergence of a small proportion of articles using Big Data, we find no evidence of a concomitant decline in the use of survey data. On the contrary, the use of surveys increased, being used in nearly half of all published articles in this set of journals in 2014/15 and, where articles reported using Big Data, many of them also used survey data. Additionally, we find a substantial increase in the use of secondary survey data over the reference period.

Highlights

There can be little doubt that the sample survey constituted the pre-eminent social science research method of the twentieth century (Presser, 1984; Savage, 2010)
A total of 88% of articles published in the selected journals in 2014/15 were empirical in nature, with the highest rate of non-empirical articles found in economics (20%) and political science (18%) with much smaller minorities in sociology (3%) and public opinion (2%) and none at all in social psychology
A clear growth in the use of secondary survey data is evident over this time frame, with a marked increase in the most recent period, amounting to 62% of all survey-based articles using secondary data in 2014–15 compared to 33% in 1949–50. In their provocative 2007 article, Savage and Burrows proposed that the dominance of the survey as the pre-eminent form of data in the social sciences was in imminent danger of being usurped by new forms of digital transactional data

Summary

Introduction

There can be little doubt that the sample survey constituted the pre-eminent social science research method of the twentieth century (Presser, 1984; Savage, 2010). Professionalization and expansion flowed from technical and methodological developments that came in response to the information demands of the second world war This period produced a cadre of talented survey practitioners who emerged from military research centres to establish pioneering survey institutes across the United States (Converse, 1987). By the latter decades of the twentieth century, these developments in the US had spread internationally and the survey attained near-hegemonic status as the methodological vehicle of choice in quantitative social science (Groves, 2011; Savage, 2010).

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