Sense and Nonsense About Surveys by Howard Schuman

The article gave me an insight on how a survey should be studied and how and why it is important and beneficial. Surveys is one to gatther information by asking questions. Asking questions continues to be an effective way of acquiring information of all kinds with assumption that a person answers accurately. When it comes to sampling,  probability sampling in its simplest form calls for each person in the population to have an equal chance of being selected. Also, surveys do not only depend on probability sampling. Surveys vary greatly in their quality of implementation. Another important factor in surveys are the wording and context of the questions asked. An example given in the article:
    

• Do you think the United States should forbid public speeches against democracy?
• Do you think the United States should allow public speeches against democracy?

I definetely do believe that answers would be different based on how the questions was asked. If you really pay attention its asking the same thing. But while taking surveys I dont think people take the time out to pay attention to whats being asked due to the fact that they might want to hurry and get the survey done with, its ti many questions, they are limited to say what they actually feel because they dont really have an option to say it because its either a yes or no or maybe because the survey isnt interesting to them. While some people do process the questions asked much more after they read it the first time. While said this, surveys do have an advantage still over some methods which is the ability to develop both [probability theory in sampling and experiments in questionings.