Some Questions About Community Self-Surveys

In this article I want to call attention to some of the problems that may arise when citizens are deeply involved in the conduct, that is, in the data-gathering processes of research. To be sure, for years many studies of the type classified as action-research have solicited the help and co-operation of the practitioners who presumably will utilize the research findings. But the responsibility for the direction of the investigation itself is quite clearly in the hands of the social scientist. I am concerned here, by contrast, with those projects where the research itself is conducted by non-professionals, with varying degrees of assistance from social scientists.1 The most commonly encountered example of such projects is the community self-survey. Arnold Rose has described it as follows:This survey fits the traditional pattern of surveys in content, but not in method. It is purely descriptive, and its only innovation is that the research is carried on by participant members of the community rather than by

Criminology · Socioeconomics · Sociology · Survey research · Evaluation and Performance Assessment