The Centre for Applied Social Surveys
(CASS) is a Resource Centre of the Economic
and Social Research Council (ESRC) which has been set up jointly by Social and Community Planning Research
(SCPR) and the University of
Southampton, with the University of
Surrey. CASS's main current activities are developing the Question Bank and developing and
teaching short courses in survey
methods. CASS aims to strengthen skills in survey design and analysis in the UK
social science research community.
Main Contact Points
Roger Thomas is the Director of CASS and he also directs the Survey Methods Centre
at SCPR. Professor Chris Skinner is the Deputy Director of CASS, with responsibility
for the management of courses. He is Professor of Social statistics at the University of
Southampton, and is Director of the Centre for Survey Data Analysis. Professor Martin
Bulmer is the Academic Director of the Question Bank. He is Professor of Sociology at
the University of Surrey. Teresa McGarry is a researcher at SCPR and works on the
Question Bank. Zoe Matthew's is a lecturer in the Department of Social Statistics at the
University of Southampton and is responsible for the development of CASS courses.
Many members of SCPR and Southampton's Department of Social Statistics contribute
to course teaching.
The two main activities of CASS are The Question Bank and the CASS course
programme. Both activities can be accessed via CASS's Web site at http://www.scpr.ac.uk/cass/. The Question
Bank is a wholly electronic research resource available over the World Wide Web, for
which an internet connection and web browser are required.
A. The Cass Question Bank
The Question Bank and the Electronic Revolution
The Question Bank uses the electronic medium of the Web as its central and only
medium of making social survey research resources available to social scientists and
social researchers. Like Sociological Research Online, it only has an electronic
form and does not have a paper or CD-ROM equivalent. Like the
journal, it also seeks to extend the frontiers of electonic publishing and to harness
the power of the Web for social science research. The WWW defies generalization but
it is probably true to say that a very large proportion of sites on the web are either using
the Web as an elaborate noticeboard to convey information, as a point of sale for a
commercial product, including product information, as a direct means of access to
other, off-line, material, or as a means of entertainment and/or personal expression. The
Question Bank seeks to provide electronically an in-depth reference source analogous in
some respects to an encyclopaedia or scholarly archive, with the convenience that
follows from bringing together widely disparate materials in one place, systematically
organizing them, and making them accessible from a desktop workstation to a wide
variety of users.
For those used to printed media, this is likely to be a new experience. The reader does
not have a bound volume to browse through, but a set of materials in multidimensional
cyberspace, often linked from one part to another, which has no obvious beginning and
end. The Question Bank also exploits the latest technology to make material available.
Most of the survey questionnaires are scanned and held in Portable Document Format
(pdf) form, which enables us to represent the layout of the documents which we wish
to represent. This requires for many users the once-only downloading of the Adobe
Acrobat Reader, but it gives much greater flexibility in presenting our material.
Aims of the CASS Question Bank
The Question Bank has three main aims, which are closely linked. These are:
- To provide a structured store of information about the way in which
attributes, circumstances, behaviour and attitudes of households and individuals have
been measured in major social surveys;
- To encourage appropriate standardization of meaurement procedures in quantitative
survey research, with a view to making the acquisition of knowledge about the social
world more systematic and cumulative and less plagued by lack of comparability; and
- To encourage a critical and insightful approach to problems of survey
measurement.
The Question Bank aims to be useful to survey designers, survey users and secondary
analysts of data from the surveys and in the topic areas which it covers. All have a
common interest in understanding how survey data are created and shaped through the
definition of concepts and terms and the wording, layout and administration of survey
questions and response categories.
In terms of text, the bulk of the information currently stored in the Question Bank
consists of questionnaires from the following surveys:
All but the last two are continuous; the last two are repeated peridoically. Very shortly
we aim to include other continuous surveys within the Question Bank such as the
Family Resources Survey and the National Travel Survey. This material can all be
located via menus on screen and downloaded as required.
Information can be retrieved from the Question Bank in three main ways. These
include:
The search engine currently allows users to search only on 'html' files. However, in the
next few months, we will have a search engine in place which will also enable searches
on Portable Document Format (pdf) files, which is the format that the questionnaires are
stored in. This 'pdf' format was chosen because:
- it allows the questionnaires to retain faithfully their original layout and
- it permits the text within questionnaires to be saved as text, which is potentially
searchable, rather than as a bitmap, which is not.
Users can now access the questionnaires from the Home Page menu, selecting the
survey, year and particular questionnaire they are interested in viewing. To view
questionnaires they will need to have the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed. We have
included instructions
within the Question Bank which illustrates for users how this is done.
The final search option for users is via the topic menu. There are currently 21 topics,
which include Economic Activity, Ethnicity and Race, Household Definition and
Structure, and Housing and Household Amenities. Users select a topic that they are
interested in and from this choice they are presented with a further menu listing
information options, enabling them to explore the topic area in detail. This information
will also include links to relevant questionnaires so that users can see how such topics
areas have been dealt with.
Queries and Further Information about the Question Bank
The CASS Question Bank is, and will continue to be, an evolving and expanding
resource. To ensure that the Question Bank meets the needs of its users we would
appreciate feedback especially with regards to additional surveys which users would
like included. All comments and suggestions should be addressed to Teresa
McGarry.
Tel: 0171 250 1866
fax : 0171 250 1524
e-mail: t.mcgarry@scpr.ac.uk
Postal Address: 35, Northampton Square, London. EC1V OAX
B. The Cass Courses Programme
Aims of CASS Courses
CASS offers a programme of short courses on social survey methods, covering all
aspects of the quantitative survey process from design to data collection and data
analysis. The courses have an applied emphasis, aimed at providing guidance for
researchers who face practical decision-making in surveys, such as how to design and
draw samples, how to design different types of questionnaire and questions for
different purposes, and how to analyse survey data. Numbers on most courses are
restricted to about 20 so that participants may share their experiences of survey reseach
with other participants and course presenters. There is a strong emphasis on workshops
and group participation. Participants come from academic, and also government,
commercial and independent research backgrounds. They include PhD and MSc
students, but there are also significant numbers who are engaged in substantive survey
work.
Course Programme 1996/97
Queries and further Information about CASS Courses
Information about any of the courses mentioned above can be obtained from Rebecca
Bundock.
Tel: (44) 1703-593-048
fax : (44) 1703-593-048
e-mail: cass@socsci.soton.ac.uk
Postal Address: Department of Social Statistics, University of Southampton,
Southampton, SO17 1BJ.
Teresa McGarry, Roger Thomas and Martin Bulmer
CASS
Copyright Sociological Research Online, 1997