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Book Review: Improving Surveys with Paradata: Analytic uses of process Information

Those of us in the business of designing and analysing sample surveys of human populations know that they are riddled with error . This is the case whatever method of data collection is used . Though we often concentrate on sampling error, which can be calculated with a good deal of precision if the survey is based on a random probability design; nevertheless this is just one area of error . In fact errors occur at all stages of the survey process and, of course, except for the completely naïve (of which there are distressingly high numbers) most of us take great care to minimise these errors but without knowing much about their size or nature . Such errors occur from design to reporting, they are so legion it is a wonder that we do surveys at all . But of course we do them despite this because, if done properly and so long as people continue to respond, they are an invaluable way of collecting data about what people do and how people think, which is still relatively quick and cheap . This book, one in the invaluable Wiley Series in Survey Methodology, which includes such authors as Cochrane, Deming and Kish, is a fitting addition to the series . It grew out of a conference sponsored by the Institute for Employment Research in Germany in 2011 . However, this book is not simply a collection of papers presented at that conference (with all the variation in quality that would imply), but a series of worked-through chapters derived from papers at the conference, added to and built upon . Consequently it is more up-to-date than 2011, the quality is impressively even and the references for each chapter comprehensive . The book is divided into three parts . Part I covers the idea of paradata, and the different stages in the survey process of how and why they occur . Part II is about paradata in survey production – using knowledge of paradata to improve surveys . Part III is about special challenges imposed by paradata in particular situations . But some readers may wonder about the term paradata as it is one not yet commonly used in survey literature . Kreuter says ‘we define paradata as additional data that can be captured during the process of producing a survey statistic . Those data can be captured at all stages of the survey process and with very different granularities’ (p . 3) . Unfortunately, paradata are subject to error too where they require manual entry or rely on interviewer observations . Most readers will be familiar with and may even have measured and sought to ameliorate non-response errors . Chapter 2, by Frauke Kreuter International Journal of Market Research Vol. 56 Issue 5