What factors must be considered before designing the survey?

With developing technologies and the demand for increasingly detailed knowledge, biological surveys are becoming more and more expensive. However, resources to undertake surveys are generally limited with respect to both time and funding, and a researcher needs considerable skill to implement a survey that delivers the desired information while being both cost and time efficient.

Burbidge (1991) states that the important questions that should be asked during survey planning are as follows:

Why are you planning this survey? Is it more important than other studies?
What exactly is the question being asked?
What is the minimum data set required to answer the question? How many organisms should be surveyed?
What is the most cost-efficient and cost-effective method of collecting the necessary data? Does the sampling strategy provide data that are suitable for formal quantitative analysis and statistical appraisal?
Who else may be able to use the data? Will they contribute to the costs of collecting data?
What is the most cost-effective method of communicating the results?

These questions fall into two critical areas:

Please explore these questions further.

We would like you now to look ahead to Assessment Items 3 & 4, the case studies (see 'assignments' section). Although you should plan to start work on these after you have completed the residential component of the course, we would like you to bear them in mind as you work through the topics ahead.