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Survey Guidelines

GESIS Survey Guidelines

The GESIS Survey Guidelines are part of a central GESIS service for advising scientists on methodological issues related to the organization and implementation of surveys. The single contributions of the Survey Guidelines offer a practice-oriented overview as well as best-practice recommendations on relevant aspects of survey planning and implementation that are frequently requested in consulting. Thematically, the guidelines can be divided into four different areas: Recommendations and assistance on aspects concerning the survey process ("Survey Operations"), on the development of survey instruments ("Survey Instruments"), on aspects of survey statistics ("Survey Statistics"), and recommendations including checklists on how to ensure Open Methodology ("Survey Documentation"). 

The GESIS Survey Guidelines are supplemented by additional materials (e.g., slide sets, analysis code) as well as references to related services and research. 

 Each Survey Guideline was subjected to a non-blinded peer review with at least two GESIS internal or external reviewers prior to publication. 

The GESIS Survey Guidelines as well as additional materials are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC). The content of the GESIS Survey Guidelines and additional materials can therefore be distributed and made public for non-commercial purposes with attribution to the author(s)/the editor. A recommended citation of the Guidelines can be found in the individual contribution. 

Further information can be found in the Introduction (1.03 MB). News regarding the GESIS Survey Guidelines are documented in our annual reports: Report Survey Guidelines 2019/ 2020 (105 kB) and the Report Survey Guidelines 2021 (82 kB).

Despite the multitude of contributions, the GESIS Survey Guidelines do not exhaustively cover all aspects of survey planning and implementation. For additional information on how to plan and conduct your own research projects, please also note the FORS guides on survey methods and data management, the cross-cultural survey guidelines of the University of Michigan, and services of other institutions such as the Arbeitsgemeinschaft sozialwissenschaftlicher Institute e.V. (ASI). In the context of Open Science, please also refer to the CESSDA data management expert guide (DMEG) as well as information on research ethics and data protection standards.