Conferences

Research has been under taken to improve the quality and effectiveness of surveys and from reviewing this work a model to assess the quality of surveys has been developed. The model has been applied to over 100 national and international surveys. This generates data on formulation, design and application quality. These data have been used along with attributes of the surveys examined to create a database. Various measures of the survey were taken such as average question length, number of questions, number of citations in papers were taken and input in to the database. This database has been analaysed using tools of statistical classification. This has allowed the identification of structural features of surveys which are associated with the quality of the survey. It is these features which are reported on in this paper. The paper is concluded with a discussion as to how the approach of six sigma can be used to improve the quality of surveys. Recommendations are made as to how a systematic approach can be taken to improve survey quality and effectiveness.