A farmer being interviewed for a survey, West Java, Indonesia

Limitations of the survey approach

‘But questionnaire surveys often take more time and resources than estimated, enslave researchers, and generate misleading data and unread reports. Some bad questionnaire surveys make rural people appear ignorant when they are not.’

Robert Chambers, Rural Development: Putting the Last First, Chapter III

Besides conducting focus group discussions, one can also pretest prototype communication materials through the use of survey research. Surveys focus on people and their beliefs, opinions, attitudes, motivations, and behavior. The goal in survey research is to infer the characteristics of a given population from samples drawn from that population.

There has been a demand for surveys because of their usefulness in evaluating the effectiveness of projects and development interventions, trying out prototype communication materials, setting the research agenda, testing research hypotheses, and designing extension strategies. The popularity of surveys also stems from the fact that survey data can be subjected to statistical analysis, which generate quantitative indicators often desired by donors and practitioners. As Robert Chambers and other experts have pointed out, surveys can be costly, inefficient and superficial unless these are carefully planned and combined with in-depth and more sensitive techniques carried out by a multi-disciplinary team.

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