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BOOKS AND RESOURCES

Explore the world of books, guidelines, online resources to enhance and improve your management of volunteers .

~June 2010~

Floyd J. Fowler, Jr.
ISBN 0-8093-3294-4
Fourth Edition

Do you survey volunteers?  Members?  Clients?  Have you used SurveyMonkey?  No doubt at some point you have or will be asked to construct a survey related to the volunteers and the work they do in the organization.  Even if you have done surveys in the past, this book will add to your knowledge and sophistication in survey design and implementation.  Beginners will like the straight-forward approach to designing a survey.  Experienced managers can read to evaluate past surveys and add skills for future ones.

Survey construction, from establishing the purpose of the survey, through design, data collection, to analysis is a scientific endeavor and often done badly by neophytes.  Survey Research Methods, 4th Ed., is a handy small book (159 pages) that takes the beginner through the steps of effective survey design.  The book covers mail, telephone, and interview types of surveys. Chapter 5 is devoted to getting the questions right, to increase the reliability and validity of the data collected.

There is a chapter to help the reader understand how to prepare data for analysis;  coding, data entry, and data cleaning.  The author also covers ethical issues inherent in any type of survey research.