Surveys

The survey is the most common method by which sociologists gather their data. The Gallup poll is perhaps the

most well-known example of a survey and, like all surveys, gathers its data with the help of a questionnaire that is

given to a group of respondents. The Gallup poll is an example of a survey conducted by a private organization,

but sociologists do their own surveys, as does the government and many organizations in addition to Gallup.

Many surveys are administered to respondents who are randomly chosen and thus constitute a random sample.

In a random sample, everyone in the population (whether it be the whole US population or just the population

of a state or city, all the college students in a state or city or all the students at just one college, etc.) has the

same chance of being included in the survey. The beauty of a random sample is that it allows us to generalize the

results of the sample to the population from which the sample comes. This means that we can be fairly sure of

the behavior and attitudes of the whole US population by knowing the behavior and attitudes of just four hundred

people randomly chosen from that population.