Spring 2027

Introduction to Survey Research

Introduction to survey research covering theory and practice, including questionnaire design, sampling, data visualization, and statistical analysis.

no offering record for this termCredits unavailable
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 No instructors listed

Summary

1 / 8

Past student reviews · Eleanor Powell, Ethan vanderWilden

The class typically required no exams, relying instead on a semester-long group project. Attendance was not mandatory, though some terms required specific lecture check-ins.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Formulate and construct logical arguments about political phenomena and evaluate those arguments using survey research

  • Explain the theoretical components of survey research

  • Interpret survey results in general with a particular focus on political polling

  • Design and assess political surveys, including questionnaire design, question wording, survey mode, sample size, nonresponse, survey experiments, standard error, and margin of error

  • Demonstrate statistical analysis skills in the context of political surveys including: hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, difference of means tests, data visualization and linear regression

  • Recognize ethical issues in survey research

  • Assess the state of a body of scholarly literature related to course themes, identify gaps in that literature, and formulate an original research question in the context of those gaps.

Source: UW Guide 1 UW Guide 2 UW Guide 3

Grade history

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average GPA
letter grades
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All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

Sophomore standing

  • Sophomore standing
JOURN/POLISCI/URBRPL 373

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • Sophomore standing

Professors

Spring 2027

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

ELEANOR POWELL is recorded teaching in Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

ETHAN VANDERWILDEN is recorded teaching in Fall 2023, Fall 2024. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Eleanor Powell, Ethan vanderWilden

Students found the course engaging, noting that instructors provided helpful feedback and made themselves accessible for the semester-long research project.

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2024: 3.49 GPA, 75.8% A/AB (n=99 letter grades); Fall 2024: 3.46 GPA, 68.9% A/AB (n=90 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.71 GPA, 86.0% A/AB (n=100 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Eleanor Powell, Ethan vanderWilden

The class typically required no exams, relying instead on a semester-long group project. Attendance was not mandatory, though some terms required specific lecture check-ins.

Past student reviews · Eleanor Powell

Some students described the lectures as dry, while others found the coding in R component straightforward if they paid attention in class.

Topics

  • Survey research theory and practice
  • Political polling and interpretation of survey results
  • Ethical issues in survey research

Skills

  • Questionnaire design, sampling, data visualization, and statistical analysis
  • Hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, difference of means tests, and linear regression
  • Designing and assessing political surveys, including question wording, survey mode, and sample size

Grades

Latest available · Fall 2025— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Fall 2025

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Fall 2025 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1316 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records

No offering records for the selected term.

Raw records 
[]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
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Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

Download part 1
Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "6f5c2f473d5f8014aa5e00db306b3890f88978bf4be697f4e980261090146f7d",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}