Demographics and Customer Surveys
The science of demography is essentially the study of population statistics. A "population" does not necessarily mean everyone in the land. A population can be everyone who attends a soccer match (a crowd population) or everyone who is a member of a sport association ( a member population). The word "population" can also be used when referring to everyone who has responded to a survey. The total number of survey respondents is the "sample" population. Sample population is an important concept in statistics. When researchers want to predict or find out the opinion of a whole population (for example - all voters in Australia) they do not need to survey everyone. Instead researchers will survey a sample population that may be only a few hundred or perhaps a thousand people. Provided the sample population is representative of the whole population, then the results of the survey on the sample population can be inferred to the whole population.
When researching the views and opinions of people, it is very useful to analyse the answers they give according to attributes that they possess. For example, if we were researching the views of participants in a sport program, we might want to know whether any differences of opinion exist between young and older participants, or perhaps between males and females. If we can find some differences in opinion between young and older participants, then this information may be very useful.
In fact there are many ways to categorise a population. The following table provides some of the most common ways:
| A
population can be categorised by: |
ATTRIBUTE |
| Gender | |
| Age | |
| Place of Residence | |
| Country of Birth | |
| Level of income | |
| Occupation | |
| Marital status | |
| Level of education | |
| Family Size | |
| Language spoken at home | |
| Note: There are many other possibilities | |
Categorising any give population according to attributes as listed above is the science of Demography. When researching the views of a population it is extremely important therefore to collect demographic data about the people we are surveying. This necessitates putting appropriate questions on the survey form.
If you are considering implementing a survey, it is important to consider that you must strike a balance between asking to few and too many questions, especially when asking for personal data. There is a definite need to collect some demographic data but do not go overboard!
See example table using demographics.
