Survey Research

Whereas in-depth interviews are effective at listening for culture and its (likely implicit) influence on how people understand their worlds, survey research is effective as a tool to collect data on people’s explicit attitudes and beliefs. Through closed-ended survey questions, researchers can trace patterns in people’s consciously held attitudes across groups and over time. Scholars employing survey research to study culture argue that the attitudes expressed by survey respondents are reflective or representative of cultural beliefs more broadly. Accordingly, survey research is particularly suited to observing evidence of cultural shifts over time. For example, changes in cultural beliefs about the role of women in society can be tracked by asking representative samples of people questions about their gender attitudes over time (see Cotter et al. 2011).

Methodological Exemplars

Cotter, David, Joan M. Hermsen, and Reeve Vanneman. 2011. “The End of the Gender Revolution?  Gender Role Attitudes from 1977-2008.” American Journal of Sociology 117:259-89.

Powell, Brian, Catherine Bolzendahl, Claudia Geist, and Lala Carr Steelman. 2012. Counted Out: Same-sex Relations and Americans' Definitions of Family. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.