Rating: 
Summary: The book on surveys
Review: Dillman is the authority on survey methodology, and this book contains a wealth of information on survey construction, administration, etc. He also includes information on the use of internet surveys, and thankfully stresses their weaknesses. As with other areas, this book stresses the design and not the nuts-and-bolts needed. It won't teach you how to write an HTML form, but it won't teach you how to run a word processor either. It will teach you how to create effective surveys that can maximize your return rate, along with proper administration.
Rating: 
Summary: Still lots of great wisdom on survey research.
Review: Dillman's text was the classic for so long that many of us think of him as the guru of survey research. I would guess that is why the Census Bureau hired him as their lead consultant for the 2000 Census.As has been pointed out, Dillman does not present as much theoretical material as he might. But, I don't think that that detracts from the strengths of this book. There are other books out there that cover the cognitive and social psychology behind survey answers, and there are other books that give you guidance on the scientific method, experimental design, sampling, etc. (I would recommend Babbie's Practice of Social Research) And Dillman even has a more hands-on book (How to Conduct Your Own Survey) for non-scientists. But, the real strength of Dillman's book might be how well he instructs on how to put together a great questionnaire - the design, layout, order, question design and implementation. I find his take on internet surveys to be controversial and a little out-of-date. But, my concerns might be viewed as those of a skeptic - I'm not yet convinced that internet surveys are viable for all that many situations. And, I think Dillman does a good job of laying out some of the challenges and promises of internet surveys.
Rating:
Summary: Still lots of great wisdom on survey research.
Review: Dillman's text was the classic for so long that many of us think of him as the guru of survey research. I would guess that is why the Census Bureau hired him as their lead consultant for the 2000 Census. As has been pointed out, Dillman does not present as much theoretical material as he might. But, I don't think that that detracts from the strengths of this book. There are other books out there that cover the cognitive and social psychology behind survey answers, and there are other books that give you guidance on the scientific method, experimental design, sampling, etc. (I would recommend Babbie's Practice of Social Research) And Dillman even has a more hands-on book (How to Conduct Your Own Survey) for non-scientists. But, the real strength of Dillman's book might be how well he instructs on how to put together a great questionnaire - the design, layout, order, question design and implementation. I find his take on internet surveys to be controversial and a little out-of-date. But, my concerns might be viewed as those of a skeptic - I'm not yet convinced that internet surveys are viable for all that many situations. And, I think Dillman does a good job of laying out some of the challenges and promises of internet surveys.
Rating:
Summary: Light on the technical side
Review: For those of you who do survey research and struggle with getting an acceptible response rate, this is the book for you. It truly is an amazing resource for a method that can get one to near a 75% response even on mail-only surveys. Highly recommended. For those of you looking for any help on statistics, this is NOT the book for you. For those of you interested in increasing the validity and reliability of your surveys, this is could be the book for you. It does have an effective treatment of writing questions and effective survey design. If you wish to become an expert in coverage, sample frames, sampling, etc, look elsewhere. That topic gets just 10 pages. No book can do it all of course but I would have left out some of the "fluff" chapters Dillman included for some discussion of the more technical side of the statistics of analyzing surveys after you have designed them the way he suggests.
Rating:
Summary: Light on the technical side
Review: For those of you who do survey research and struggle with getting an acceptible response rate, this is the book for you. It truly is an amazing resource for a method that can get one to near a 75% response even on mail-only surveys. Highly recommended. For those of you looking for any help on statistics, this is NOT the book for you. For those of you interested in increasing the validity and reliability of your surveys, this is could be the book for you. It does have an effective treatment of writing questions and effective survey design. If you wish to become an expert in coverage, sample frames, sampling, etc, look elsewhere. That topic gets just 10 pages. No book can do it all of course but I would have left out some of the "fluff" chapters Dillman included for some discussion of the more technical side of the statistics of analyzing surveys after you have designed them the way he suggests.
Rating:
Summary: So much to say, even to those who think they know
Review: I have close to 20 years of experience in market research; yet with the move that many are making to conducting their research over the Internet, I knew I needed to get a lot of learning quickly, in order to better understand the trade-offs being made between cost savings and research quality. Dillman's book fills that need. Building on an earlier edition, which focused on the issues surrounding interviewing by mail, Dillman confronts issues surrounding lack of randomness, need for clarity in a self-administered-survey world, and issues of internet coverage, in drawing conclusions. Also, he has a very helpful discussion on the issues surrounding combining data collected through different methodologies at once. Dillman also discusses the need to recruit within the context of a social exchange; we are, after all, collecting information with the respondent's approval, and our generalizations are stronger when we have a good sampling plan and can maximize co-operation. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: A bit outdated but worth checking out
Review: I purchased this book and was a bit dissapointed that there was focuse on outdated methods like mail-in responses. With the advent of the Web, we've cut our client's costs by 80% and get them a 30% better response rate. Just make sure that whatever survey provider you go with offers correlation analysis, Confidence intervals, and Cumulative distribution are among the various statistical measures used to analyze your results. We're using Vista - no other survey tool gives you all of this crucial information.
Rating:
Summary: Ideal book for Net scholars
Review: More and more social surveys are being carried out online. This book offers a helpful guide to communication scholars on how to design and implement Internet surveys. As we all know, this thing called cyberspace is still a vast unknown territory. We need a lot of important resources to help us understand the nature of this new medium and to know the characteristics of its users. This book is one of those resources. It provides solid information on how to meet the challenges, as well as, maximize the potentials of the Internet.
Rating:
Summary: Ideal book for Net scholars
Review: More and more social surveys are being carried out online. This book offers a helpful guide to communication scholars on how to design and implement Internet surveys. As we all know, this thing called cyberspace is still a vast unknown territory. We need a lot of important resources to help us understand the nature of this new medium and to know the characteristics of its users. This book is one of those resources. It provides solid information on how to meet the challenges, as well as, maximize the potentials of the Internet.
Rating:
Summary: Strong book but doesn't cover software
Review: This is a good book, but it doesn't offer much help picking an Internet survey tool, and there are a lot of choose from: perseus.com, raosoft.com, inquisite.com, scantron.com. I would have liked to see some discussion or analysis of the types of tools that could be used.
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