ASC 2003 - The Impact of Technology on the Survey Process

Proceedings of the ASC International Conference, September 2003

Edited by Randy Banks, James Currall, John Francis, Laurance Gerrard, Raz Khan, Tim Macer, Malcolm Rigg, Ed Ross, Steve Taylor and Andrew Westlake.  ISBN: 0 9521682 9 4, ix+412 pages.

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This is the Association for Survey Computing’s fourth major international conference on survey and statistical computing. As with others in the series, the aim of this one was to provide as broad a view as possible of the salient issues and challenges confronting the field.

Papers by three of the four speakers invited to address plenary sessions of the conference comprise the first section of this volume. Norman Glass, the Chief Executive of the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) and our keynote speaker, tackles the main conference theme head-on, discussing the range of ways in which technological changes have impacted on NatCen’s working practices over the past decade. David Pullinger, the Deputy Director Communication in the Office for National Statistics, examines the democratisation of official statistics in the UK and, in this context, the pull-push effect of web-technology, in particular, on the empowerment of civil society. Peter Mouncey, who, inter alia, is Director of Research at the Institute of Direct Marketing, considers both the threats posed and opportunities offered by new technologies to the reputation and independence of the survey research industry. Our end-note speaker, Ian Diamond, Director of the Economic and Social Research Council, was kind enough to step in rather too late in the day to produce a paper on his topic of The Impact of Technology on the Survey Process. Future Prospects and the Role of the ESRC in time for publication.

The remainder and majority of this volume consist of contributed papers addressing one of the six major themes that emerged when the Scientific Programme Committee (SPC) grouped together the proposals that were accepted from amongst the many excellent offers we originally received. In the order in which they appear in this volume, they are:

• Organisational Behaviour
• Survey Development
• Survey Software
• Survey Modalities
• The Effectiveness of the Internet
• Data Dissemination

In some respects, these themes serve as headings for convenience only, as many papers could easily have fit under more than one heading. We expect the reader to find much pleasure in noting the many points of contact and convergence between the papers regardless of the immediate company they are seen to be keeping. The contributed papers include both case studies and more theoretical reflections; some represent the outcome of purely methodological investigations, while others have a substantive focus; and those of us, shall we say, whose length of service now casts a significant shadow, will also find material on which quietly nostalgic reminiscences can be agreeably based. Regardless of content or technique, however, we are sure that the reader will find the papers in this volume instructive, thought-provoking and, in many cases, directly and practically applicable to his or her own circumstances.

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