SURVEY AND SAMPLING RESEARCH: ELEMENTARY THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTIONS

Abstract

When a searcher wants to investigate a problem, whose solution depends on information coming from people, a Survey research may be the suitable methodological procedure. This article has as main objective to discuss about the survey research theoretical, operational and ethically. It has as specific objectives to conceptualize survey by telling its characteristics, discussing its development through history, presenting its operational elements (technics and tools); to offer briefly theoretical aspects about sampling; to indicate the reaches and edges of the survey; to debate ethical issues to this sort of research; to exposure available tools for its execution in the Web. There is, at the end, a brief comment about the mainly selected works employed to compose this article. Which has its construction justified by being an input of elementary knowledges to enable researchers investigate using this sort of procedure. The base was two seminal works that discuss the survey research: Babbie (1999) and Fowler Jr. (2011). This article’s methodological construction is based on literary and electronic review. It was concluded that the operational elements, the data collection tools, the vantages and disadvantages were properly presented, as well as the reaches and edges of the survey research.