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The research was designed to collect primary data from individuals in households who were to report on their household structure, their own behaviour and motives and those of others in the household. The principal method of enquiry in this research has been a household survey; however this has been combined with in depth qualitative interviewing of a biographical style (Ni Laoire 2000) as discussed earlier. A household survey provides a broad range of aggregate data on the behaviours on in-migrants which allows the impact of a number of variables to be assessed. The survey provided a way for the theories developed from the literature and qualitative interviews to be tested with a large sample. Specially designed surveys are the most obvious way of collecting data on the motivations of

in-migrants (Boyle and Halfacree 1998). This is because information on in-in-migrants motivations is not readily available elsewhere. This made the household survey the central feature of this research and it also provided primary, qualitative and quantitative data on household

information and the behaviour of in-migrants to rural areas of Wales.

"Questionnaire survey research is a research method for gathering information about the characteristics, behaviours and/or attitudes of a population by administering a standardized set of questions, or questionnaire, to a sample of individuals" ( McLafferty, 2003: 87).

Within the fields of geography and the social sciences, exploring people's attitudes, behaviours and feelings is often undertaken via surveys. This is a valuable method for finding out about social interactions and complex behaviours (Robinson, 2008; Parfitt, 1997).

The information that this research wanted to gather was not readily available from other sources so following in the tradition of Williams and Sofranko (1979) who surveyed in-migrants motivations this research embarked upon a household survey.

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In-migrants as a group have been surveyed on several occasions. Findlay et al (1999) surveyed several rural wards in England, The Wales Rural Observatory surveyed households in Wales in 2004 (WRO 2004). In-migrant business owners have been the subject of surveys in the North East of England (Raley and Moxey 2000, Bosworth 2008) and Keeble and Tyler (1995) used a matched pair methodology to study business owning in-migrants in the 1990s. This survey did not intend to replicate the results of these previous research projects, but provide useful additional information which would allow the choices in-migrants make and the explanations for these choices to be explored.

3.6.1 The debate about the value of survey research

There are those who argue in favour of the use of surveys as the instrument of data collection and those who take the opposite view. On the plus side surveys are flexible and have the potential to provide both qualitative and quantitative data. Surveys can be

completed either by the respondent (self-completion questionnaires) or alternatively the researcher can ask the respondent questions in an interview format. They are a cost effective way of reaching large samples and facilitate data collection on household groups (May 2001). Surveys can if properly designed reduce bias through standardisation as Oppenheim notes (1992:67) ‘every respondent has been asked the same questions, with the same meaning, in the same words, same intonation, same sequence in the same setting and so on...’ Secondly through replicability another researcher should be able to get the same results if using a similar questionnaire, sampling framework etc. This also increase’s the reliability and validity of the survey, in that a similar result would be obtained on a different occasion and this would demonstrate that it was measuring what it had been intended to measure – ensuring validity (May 2001). Finally surveys can achieve if correctly administered representativeness in that it will be representative of the population and produce statistically significant findings.

Turning now to the negatives associated with using surveys – there are many criticisms of surveys. Some of the criticism stems from the fact that surveys most often explore the relationships between variables. Often this can be in the form of cause and affect which some, such as May (2001), argue is not applicable to human action which is conceived to be essentially rule following, not caused. Furthermore surveys often ‘fix’ the answers of

respondents within a tight framework which prohibits respondents from articulating their own thoughts or feelings. There is also an issue with attitudes and actions which even as far back as Lapiere in 1934 has been considered. He noted that in a survey of French and English hoteliers and their response to ‘dark skinned people’ the survey revealed prejudice to letting

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difficulty in securing lodgings. Thereby highlighting what people say and what people do are two very different things (May 2001).

It is clear that there are both different views on the benefits and drawbacks from using surveys / questionnaires. Some of these reflect different views about the nature of social reality and the possibility of knowing about this reality and thus about the nature of social research itself. However many of these supposed drawbacks can be overcome through careful pilot work as Lapiere (1934) (quoted in May 2001) concluded. Indeed there are those who would argue that ‘questionnaires can tap meanings if adequately designed and piloted and that the divide which is often thought to exist between quantitative and qualitative research actually impoverishes the aim of understanding and explaining human relations’

(McLaughlin 1991).

A further issue with migration research in general and in the case of surveys specifically is when respondents are called upon to report on behaviour and events that happened before the survey. As Stockdale (2006 page 358) notes “with hindsight in-migrants put a favourable and rational interpretation on their actions and lifetime events. They may only recall the main events omitting secondary factors. Moreover they are keen to portray their actions and experiences in positive terms.” There is no clear way to avoid this post event rationalisation and associated memory recall issues in migration research except to conduct longitudinal surveys which are expensive and usually impractical to conduct. However Boyle and Halfacree (1993) suggest a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods can overcome some of the difficulties.

Despite the difficulties of cross comparison and issues with surveys in general – the household survey was the most effective means of procuring a large data set about the economic activity of in-migrants and non-migrants something that had not been done

previously. The survey was used to build a profile of households and businesses in selected rural areas of Wales. The household survey was also used to create retrospective histories of residential and employment careers and to build a profile of the non-migrant population of rural areas of Wales despite the possible difficulties associated with this discussed above.

The survey allowed ideas to be explored as to how influences at different levels – individual (qualifications, age, gender), household (household structure, previous residential history) and area (such as labour markets, rurality and Welshness) affect in-migrant behaviour.

Other methods were considered such as interviews and secondary data analysis, indeed as discussed earlier a number of qualitative biographical style interviews (Ni Laoire 2000) were conducted (the findings of which are reported in later chapters). However there is a long tradition of survey work in the field and it was felt that the addition of this survey to the

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existing data sets would provide a more complete picture of in-migrant economic activity.

However in order to minimise some of the issues discussed above re memory recall issues in migration research a mix of qualitative interviews and the quantitative study were

conducted as recommended by Boyle and Halfacree 1993. The survey however remains the principal instrument of enquiry in this research.

Further justification for the choice of survey methods in this research stem from the fact that the types of questions that this research was posing require a large sample of cases to answer effectively. Appropriate secondary data did not exist to explore in-migrant economic activity. Qualitative interviews were conducted as part of the research methodology and allowed for in depth discussion on a range of economic activity issues. However they also highlighted that a larger data set would allow better exploration of the research questions.

The interviews provided a useful rich data set to explore individual in-migrants biographies.

The survey allowed the economic activity patterns of in-migrants to be explored and compared to that of non-migrants.

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