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Using The Internet To Survey Small Towns And Communities: Limitations And Possibilities In The Early 21st Century, Jolene D. Smyth, Don A. Dillman, Leah Melani Christian, Allison C. O'Neill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Researchers who are interested in small towns and rural communities in the United States often find that they need to conduct their own sample surveys because many large national surveys, such as the American Community Survey, do not collect enough representative responses to make precise estimates. In collecting their own survey data, researchers face a number of challenges, such as sampling and coverage limitations. This article summarizes those challenges and tests mail and Internet methodologies for collecting data in small towns and rural communities using the U.S. Postal Service’s Delivery Sequence File as a sample frame. Findings indicate that the …