Approaching Quality in Survey Research: Towards a Comprehensive Perspective

The article has two goals: (1) bring attention to the problem of inappropriate treatment of survey data quality issues in the social sciences, and (2) introduce the basic principles of contemporary approaches to survey quality. If quality evaluation focuses solely on sampling error, most aspects of data quality are ignored and surveys are assumed to have ‘ideal’ statistical characteristics that are rarely attainable in the pragmatic world of survey fieldwork.