Within the study of communication, there are two types of research that can be conducted. There is qualitative and quantitative research. While qualitative researchers use words, quantitative researchers use numerical terms. They use these numerical terms to represent human behavior. The researchers come up with predictions and explanations for this human behavior.
A common form of quantitative research is surveying. Surveying allows the researcher to make comparisons across different groups of people, to generalize results of a large population, and to represent theoretical concepts in numerical terms. Surveys can involve random sampling, face-to-face, telephone interviewing, mailed and structured questionnaires, field observation, and content analysis. In today's society, it is common to find survey's posted online.
When searching "surveys" online on a major search engine, many different links came up. One type of link that continuously came up was for creating your own survey. Although, others such as "favorite football team,""fun surveys," and "myspace surveys" showed up. I logged into the favorite football survey and placed my vote with the Green Bay Packers. After I voted, the results showed that seven people have participated in this survey. It showed a tie of 14% for the Vikings, the Patriots, the Ravens, the Steelers, and others. The Packers are currently the favored team with 29% of the vote.
Even though this survey has little to do with the study of communication, it shows how common researchers may use a survey to help them with developing theories and methods. With the use of surveys, quantitative researchers are able to narrow their focus and examine only the factors they think will be important and influential.
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