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The history of surveys
The history of surveys is essentially the history of the technology used to collect and interpret information. As tech has developed, so has our capacity to know ourselves on a large scale.
- The first mention of a census is in the Bible in the book of Exodus.
- In Chinese mythology, you’ll find a census from 2000 years before the common era – the census of Yu the Great.
- The Romans used a census throughout the Republican period and then into the empire, where they would use it to structure their society.
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246 reads
MORE IDEAS ON THIS
The Seaton Device
The 1880 census in the United States had an increasingly important role, for example, in determining how the political representation would be assigned. But with a growing population, the census was also growing, collecting more data than the government could tabulate or quickly process.
A ...
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193 reads
Herman Hollerith tabulating machine
Herman Hollerith previously worked in the census office and experienced first-hand how broken the process of collecting, analyzing, and reporting on that data was. So he built a machine that counted the stored data at a far greater speed and with far higher accuracy than they’d been able to befor...
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190 reads
Paper census found inadequate
During Roman times, censuses were taken on everything, from bundles of knotted thread to wax tablets. The information was engraved on stone. Eventually, the technology of paper transformed communication and record-keeping. But the problem with paper is that it comes large and unwieldy.
In ...
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215 reads
A census is an amazing system
Asking questions leads to knowledge, not just about our population size or place of birth, but about every aspect of our lives.
Surveys have grown to allow everyone to ask opinions on their products and services, from your local pet store to huge multinational corporations. This des...
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331 reads
The birth of the online survey
Tristram Hooley, a professor at Inland Norway University, spend years running online surveys for businesses. He co-wrote a book, What is Online Research, in which the authors pinpoint the birth of the online survey.
The first online survey was possibly in 1986 when they were doing ...
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189 reads
Essentials of online surveys
You’ll get a better response rate and quality response if your survey is in context, asking customers questions about the thing they’re currently doing in your product.
Surveys should reach users wherever they are, be that your web application or your mobile app, and they can also be sent ...
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200 reads
Online survey challenges
The biggest challenge is to get people to fill them in. If you want to claim some sort of representativeness of what you are doing, you have to get the right people or the right spread of people to fill it in.
Some surveys are not well made. For example,
- A business asks you som...
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183 reads
CURATED FROM
IDEAS CURATED BY
Andrew Whitby, author of The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, from the Ancient World to the Modern Age, gives insight into the history and uses of surveys.
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