2.2 What construct does the survey measure?
Survey design studies purport to measure a construct which may be theoretical (for example, opinion, beliefs, attitudes) or practical (for example, ownership of certain objects, time spent on certain tasks). Survey design studies, especially those providing opinions, gather data made by respondents after the fact. As a result, the data is in one sense subjective and unverified and in another sense objective. For example, if we ask a certain group how many hours a week they spend talking with their families and they report a specific number, subjectively we may wonder if that number is correct, but objectively, it is the number they reported, and we can work with it (Bernard, 1994, p. 261).