The goal of this workshop is to help introduce some of these concepts in easy-to-understand means, and answer questions you as a professional might have.

Session 1: Who do we ideally want in our survey and who can we have in practice

• In an Australian census questionnaires are sent to every household in Australia, and we know that there are portions of the Australian population not covered in the census (eg. those people in hospital or who are travelling for business or vacation). In this session we explore the difference between the ideal target population and the population we can survey in practice, and we describe the biases that can occur due to differences between these populations.

Session 2: Choosing a representative subset from a list of possible survey participants

• When conducting a survey we generally only survey a small subset of people chosen from the list of all possible survey participants. This is done in order to achieve a balance between the time and cost involved in conducting the survey, and the desired accuracy of survey results. In this session we will describe this survey sampling process and introduce two standard sampling procedures – simple random sampling and cluster sampling.

Session 3: Methods of data collection

• There are many options for collecting data for a given survey including face-to-face interviews, telephone surveys, and computer-assisted surveys. These data collection methods differ in a number of ways including the amount of time and money required, the proportion of participants that complete the survey, and the accuracy of completed surveys. In this session we compare and contrast the different methods for data collection.

Session 4: Interview techniques, and accounting for bias

• Surveys generally involve some level of input from the interviewer, where there is always the potential that the interviewer might influence the choice of responses provided by the study participant. The reasons for this influence can include a reduced reporting of behaviour and opinions that might not be deemed socially acceptable by the interviewer, and can further be influenced by factors such as the age, gender or race of the interviewer. In this session we introduce many of the reasons for bias during a survey interview, and methods for minimising these types of bias.

These workshops will use a combination of three teaching styles:

• Lectures

• Group discussions

• Computer exercises (for one practical session in Survey Design A)

During the lecture sessions the theory of survey design will be presented, and will be discussed in an interactive manner with the class.

During the group discussions the class will be involved in both designing a survey and also in being the participants within the survey. Through such a process a number of practical issues involved in survey design will be explored.

Computer exercises
One practical session in Survey Design A will involve the use of laptop computers. For these sessions participants will be asked to bring their own laptops and the exercise will be conducted using Microsoft Excel. Prior experience with Microsoft Excel would be beneficial, though not required.

This workshop is intended for audience members who are new to the methods of survey research, and who desire a solid foundation in these methods. A simple knowledge of statistics is assumed (where audience members should be comfortable discussing terms such as mean and variance), and a basic understanding of Microsoft Excel would be helpful for one computer exercise.

These workshops are designed for a broad range of participants, researchers from various application fields who only spend a small portion of their time doing statistics (but researchers who when they do statistics want to be doing statistics well). Communicating complex statistical ideas to a non-statistical audience requires significant skill. Equations for example are vital for statisticians who want to describe statistical models accurately but succinctly, however these equations can be a stumbling block for a larger audience who are not used to working with complex equations. We think one sign of a good statistician is that they know the pictures that go on behind the equations, and in our workshops we focus on the pictures rather than the equations.

Working with this broad audience we teach complex statistical theory (we find it heart-breaking when excellent research studies are undone by a poor understanding of underlying statistical theory), but we teach this theory using a number of practical real-world examples. We are also a strong believer in the use of humour in a training context, where humour means that participants are more likely to relax in a training context, to engage with the training content and the presenter, and are more comfortable to ask the questions that they really want to ask about the content as a result.

Each workshop will be capped at 20 participants.