Designing Surveys : A Guide to Decisions and Procedures

Ronald F. Czaja is associate professor emeritus of sociology and anthropology at North Carolina State University. He taught courses in both undergraduate and graduate research methodology and medical sociology. His methodological research focused on sampling rare populations, response effects in surveys, and the cognitive aspects of questionnaire design. From 1969 to 1990 he worked at the Survey Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago, as project coordinator, co-head of sampling, assistant director and principal investigator.

Johnny Blair is Senior Survey Methodologist at Abt-SRBI. Previously, he was a Principal Scientist at Abt Associates and a manager of survey operations at the University of Maryland Survey Research Center and the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) Survey Research Laboratory. Over a forty-year career in survey research, he has designed and/or implemented surveys for health (including HIV high risk populations), education (including large-scale student assessments), environment (including contingent valuation), and criminal victimization (including proxy reporting) surveys among other areas.

He has conducted methodological research on sampling rare populations, measurement error in proxy reporting, cognitive and usability testing of computer-based student writing assessments and data quality in converted refusal interviews. He has been involved in a decade-long program of research on cognitive interview pretesting, most recently on the theory of pretest sample size and the validation of pretest problem identification.

He has been a member of the editorial board of Public Opinion Quarterly, and has served on several National Research Council Panels and been a consultant to many federal agencies, academic organizations, law firms and other companies. Since 1996, he has served on the Design and Analysis Committee (DAC) for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, NAEP, the Nation’s Report Card.