Free lecture notes
Principles of Survey Research
My lecture notes from 8 years at the University of Siegen. 274 slides. Freely available.
Over 8 years as a professor at the University of Siegen, I built, tested and refined these notes — lecture by lecture, with real students and their bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral theses. They cover the fundamentals of survey research systematically: from the first research question to analyzing the data. Today I’m making them freely available — to read, to learn from, and to use in your own teaching and studies.
Contents — what you’ll find in the notes
7 chapters with 30 sections in total. Every section jumps straight to its slide.
Who it’s for
- Students writing a bachelor’s or master’s thesis with an empirical part
- Researchers who want a methodological refresher
- Practitioners in HR, marketing and customer experience — for clean in-house surveys without outside consultants
- Educators looking for material for their own lectures or seminars — all 274 slides are freely accessible, as a PDF and online
License and use
Free to use for personal study, learning and teaching. A source credit on citation or reuse is appreciated. For commercial republication, please check in briefly with support@questionstar.com.
About the author
Dr. Paul Marx — co-founder of QUESTIONSTAR. Previously 6 years a lecturer in business administration, marketing and media research at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, then 8 years a professor of business administration and marketing with a focus on market research at the University of Siegen — teaching multivariate analysis methods and data analysis at both universities. Alongside that I’ve been the technical implementer of the JOURQUAL and VHB-PMR research rankings of the German Academic Association of Business Research (VHB) for years. Between research, teaching and practice, I’ve been working with surveys for over 20 years. These notes grew alongside my academic work — and live on today because they still work. On the Blog I write short articles from time to time — lessons from practice, in the hope they help.
Further reading
If you want to go deeper on a topic, the blog has companion articles — for example on sample size in detail, on Likert scales or a guide to writing your thesis.
Looking for the tool to go with it
If reading this leaves you wanting to run your own surveys: QUESTIONSTAR is built for exactly that. The STUDENT plan from €29/year is designed specifically for students and doctoral researchers — every feature, no lock-in, GDPR-compliant and hosted in Germany. But the notes stand on their own; the tool is a separate bonus.
View plans