How To Survey Your Condo Association
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the real world
CHAPTER ONE: GENERAL ORIENTATION
Are you ready?
The nature of the task
Some general principles
Summary
A sample cover letter
CHAPTER TWO: BECOMING AN EXPERT
Self-presentation
Negotiation
Being prepared
The normal distribution
Summary: What you have learned
CHAPTER THREE: DOING A PRETEST
Questionnaires and pretests
A hypothetical example
General considerations
Entering the data
Avoiding errors
Summary
CHAPTER FOUR: INTRODUCTION TO DATA ANALYSIS
Examining a spreadsheet
Working with functions
Digression: Linking spreadsheets
Other useful functions
Summary
Extended development – Exercises
CHAPTER FIVE: RUNNING STATISTICAL TESTS
Nonparametric: chi-square
Calculating expected frequencies
Another example
Summary
CHAPTER SIX: PARAMETRIC STATISTICS
Two laws of probability
The binomial expansion
Those noisy parties
Making a multi-item index
Summary
On your own
IN CONCLUSION
The final report
Postscript
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
This is a book you will want to own. Whether you are surveying your condo association yourself, or hiring an outside firm to do it for you, it is important that you be able to evaluate the work that is done. This book tells you how to recognize subtle biases in the questions that will make them give misleading answers. It also discusses your implicit contract with the people you are surveying. That has implications for getting honest answers from them, and for your continuing relationship with them after the survey is done. Unlike an outside firm you are not going to issue a report and then get out of town. Finally, for readers who are doing the whole job themselves, the book provides step-by-step instructions on doing simple statistical tests. The book is based on a survey that the author, a professional social psychologist, did of his own condo association. That is why it discusses practical matters not covered in books written from a purely theoretical perspective.
About the Author
The author is an emeritus professor of social psychology. His doctorate is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While there he studied attitude measurement with a student of L.L. Thurstone, the founder of the field.
Wrench's previous work includes "Psychology: A Social Approach" published by McGraw-Hill. His memoirs, under the pseudonym Charles Swithin, are available on Amazon Kindle as "Memoirs of a Semi-Distinguished Professor." This book grew out of the work he did surveying his own condo association.