Administrative arrangements

The final report contributes 60% of your total mark for SOST20022 Essentials of Survey Design and Analysis.

Please submit your work using the link to the TurnItIn anti-plagiarism service on the course Blackboard. The submission link will be placed on the “Assessment / Assignments, tasks” page of Blackboard, but you will be notified about the exact location before submission opens. You

can also find detailed instructions there on how to upload your assignment to TurnItIn. The report is due by 2pm (UK time) on Tuesday, 20th of May, 2022.

Your report should not be longer than 2,000 words. (Figure/table captions, bibliography, and appendices do NOT count towards the word limit).

You are advised to keep a copy of the work you hand in. Your attention is drawn to the sections regarding late submissions, mitigating circumstances and plagiarism in the Course Outline (available on the “Essential Information / Course outline” page in Blackboard).

If  you  have  any  questions  concerning  this  assignment,  you  should  email  András  at:

andras.voros@manchester.ac.uk.

Description of the task

In order to write your report, you should find a survey for which the data and a detailed description are accessible. You can use any survey that fits this description in your report. We suggest  that  you  browse  the  database  of  the UK  Data  Service,  where  the  data  and documentation of hundreds of open access surveys from the past decades are available. We provide you with further pointers and assistance during the semester to help you choose an adequate survey for the assignment.

Using the survey dataset and documentation you chose, you are asked to

1.   motivate  and  formulate  a  research  question  about  the  relationship  between  two variables of your choice in the dataset (related course material: week 1);

2.   describe the sampling design of the survey using relevant concepts from the course (weeks 1-5);

3.   identify three important sources of bias arising from how your chosen variables were measured in the survey questionnaire (weeks 6-7);

4.   test the relationship between your variables using simple methods in R (weeks 2-5, 8);

5.  propose two ways to improve the quality of the survey, one focusing on the sampling and the other on the measurement of your variables (week 8);

6.   discuss what you find the most important ethical issue in this survey (week 9);

7.   compile a written report on the above steps (week 10).

Overview of the task

Structure of the report

We suggest the following section structure for your report (you may choose to structure your report differently):

1.   Introduction: briefly describe the empirical context of the survey

2.   Research question: motivate and formulate your research question (task 1)

3.   Sample: briefly describe the sampling used in the survey (task 2)

4.   Measurement: present the measurement of the two variables, discuss biases (task 3)

5.   Analysis: present and interpret your results (task 4)

6.   Discussion: briefly summarise the main findings, propose ways to improve survey quality, and discuss ethics (task 5-6)

7.   Appendix: add any important additional figures/tables, include R code (so that your analyses can be reproduced)

Marking criteria

20% – Data presentation and research question (sections 1-2 from the above structure)

   Do you present the context of the data (e.g. topic) and the dataset  (e.g. types of

variables, number of observations you use) clearly?

   Do you formulate your research question clearly?