Dr. Nolinske’s second article in her series is online over at NBRI, “Methods of Survey Data Collection”.  As always, she is insightful and interesting.

As a compliment to her article, I have listed some questions that will help you determine which data collection method is best for your survey.  I welcome your input.

GENERAL QUESTIONS

1.    What type of survey?

• Employee Survey
• Customer survey
• Political Poll
• Market Research
• Other

We all have to work to live. Work can be enjoyable and even fun at times. But work is mostly something we do because we have to do it. That doesn't mean you should give up one third of your life and wonder every day if what you do for a living is worth the trouble.

If your company does not engage its employees - recognizing and rewarding measureable contributions by everyone in the work force to the company's success and profitability - you feel like your efforts are wasted or no different than any other person in the office.  If you’re in management, you may wonder if the people working for you even care if you succeed. Your company's future is at stake - and that's the message of the MacLeod Report.

In May I wrote an article about the 2010 Census and the extraordinary difficulties that will be involved in the national survey this time around. I talked about the difficulties that Census Chief Robert Groves will encounter with this undertaking. I mentioned that the costs will be higher, district restructuring will be more heavily contested, some minority groups are planning to resist being counted, and countless other headaches involved.

However, I did not discuss the potential dangers derived from negative feelings towards the federal government in these difficult economic times.

Many times rural areas are hit the hardest by a recession. If you think it is tough to find a job in New York, Dallas, or Los Angeles these days, try Manchester, Kentucky. Hard times make for hard feelings. Imagine trying to feed your family while the government is handing out billions in free money to organizations that have proven themselves unsustainable in the current economy.

The current recession has almost every company in a state of red alert, cutting costs across the board, from canceling the year-end bonuses to purchasing cheaper toilet paper for office bathrooms. No expense is being spared.

However, the employee has been the most unfortunate victim of the recession. With unemployment at its highest rate in a quarter-century, tens of thousands of workers have found themselves in the cross-hairs of cost-cutting, and thousands more are wary of being next on the chopping block.

The mother of all surveys, the 2010 United States Census, may turn out to be the mother of all headaches for the new Census Chief, Robert M. Groves.

Faced with the possibility of computer glitches, operational missteps, and skyrocketing costs, surveying the nation’s population won’t be an easy task. President Obama selected Groves in early April and passed him the hot potato that’s expected to cost at least $15 billion, more than any previous count. Groves, who authored the books Surveying Victims and Survey Errors and Survey Costs, sounds like he was tailor-made for this position.