Big Data and Survey Research: Supplement or Substitute?
The increasing availability of organic Big Data has prompted questions regarding its usefulness as an auxiliary data source that can enhance the value of design-based survey data, or possibly serve as a replacement for it. Big Data’s potential value as a
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Abstract The increasing availability of organic Big Data has prompted questions regarding its usefulness as an auxiliary data source that can enhance the value of design-based survey data, or possibly serve as a replacement for it. Big Data’s potential value as a substitute for survey data is largely driven by recognition of the potential cost savings associated with a transition from reliance on expensive and often slow-to-complete survey data collection to reliance on far less-costly and readily available Big Data sources. There may be, of course, serious methodological costs of doing so. We review and compare the advantages and disadvantages of survey-based vs. Big Data-based methodologies, concluding that each data source has unique qualities and that future efforts to find ways of integrating data obtained from varying sources, including Big Data and survey research, are most likely to be fruitful. Keywords Survey research • Big Data • Data quality • Design-based data • Organic data
1 Introduction As response rates and survey participation continue to decline, and as costs of data collection continue to grow, researchers are increasingly looking for alternatives to traditional survey research methods for the collection of social science information. One approach has involved modifying scientific survey research methods through the abandonment of probability sampling techniques in favor of less expensive non-probability sampling methodologies (c.f. Cohn 2014). This strategy has
T.P. Johnson (*) Survey Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago, 412 S. Peoria St., Chicago, IL 60607, USA e-mail: [email protected] T.W. Smith General Social Survey, NORC at the University of Chicago, 1155 E 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 P. Thakuriah et al. (eds.), Seeing Cities Through Big Data, Springer Geography, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40902-3_7
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become popular enough that the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) recently felt it necessary to appoint a Task Force to investigate the issue and release a formal report (Baker et al. 2013). Others have explored the usefulness of supplementing, or replacing completely, surveys with information captured efficiently and inexpensively via “Big Data” electronic information systems. In this paper, we explore the advantages and disadvantages of using survey data versus Big Data for purposes of social monitoring and address the degree to which Big Data can become a supplement to survey research or a complete alternative or replacement for it. Survey research originally evolved out of social and political needs for better understandings of human populations and social conditions (Converse 1987). Its genesis predates considerably the pre-electronic era to a time when there were few alternative sources of systematically collected information. Over the past 80 years, survey research has grown and diversified, and complex modern societies have come t
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