This course introduces the principles of survey design and standard practices in the field, with particular emphasis on measuring political attitudes, public opinion and electoral behaviour.
This course will run in one session per day over over 5 days.
The course hours are 1.00 pm - 3.30 pm each day
Dr. Constanza Sanhueza is a Lecturer in Comparative Politics and Program Convenor of the Bachelor of Political Science at the School of Politics and International Relations (SPIR). She is also a Fellow at the Australian Centre for Federalism at ANU and Co-Chair of the Quantitative Methods Research Group at the Australian Political Studies Association. Constanza has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Mannheim. Her PhD thesis investigated the effects of immigration on voting, political parties and representation across European democracies. Constanza’s latest work has been published in Democratisation, Governance, Party Politics, and other journals. Besides her focus on academic research, Constanza has done extensive work as a consultant and advisor for the European Commission, the European Parliament, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), among other international and national agencies.
Surveys are among the most common data collection methods that political researchers and other social scientists employ. This course introduces the principles of survey design and standard practices in the field, with particular emphasis on measuring political attitudes, public opinion and electoral behaviour.
Practically oriented to initiate participants to the design, administration, and analysis of surveys, this course will cover the main aspects of survey methodology:
- key concepts and techniques,
- how design decisions affect empirical results,
- sampling strategies for political populations,
- operationalization,
- the impact of question wording on sensitive political topics,
- modes of data collection,
- leveraging AI tools to enhance survey development,
- and strategies to anticipate empirical analysis needs during the design stage.
The course emphasizes learning and applying general insights as participants work with concrete examples from electoral studies, public opinion research, and comparative political surveys.
This course will run online using Zoom.