Survey (human research)
Survey research is often used to assess thoughts, opinions, and feelings. Surveys can be specific and limited, or they can have more global, widespread goals. Psychologists and sociologists often use surveys to analyze behavior, while it is also used to meet the more pragmatic needs of the media, such as, in evaluating political candidates, public health officials, professional organizations, and advertising and marketing directors. A survey consists of a predetermined set of questions that is given to a sample. With a representative sample, that is, one that is representative of the larger population of interest, one can describe the attitudes of the population from which the sample was drawn. Further, one can compare the attitudes of different populations as well as look for changes in attitudes over time. A good sample selection is key as it allows one to generalize the findings from the sample to the population, which is the whole purpose of survey research.
Research strategies of election campaign communication research
"Problems and Challenges in Survey research" 
Survey research always has to make sure to define an adequate sample of interview partners. Finding such an adequate sample may bear some challenges, especially in comparative election campaign communication research. If scholars are not familiar with the local election network in a country they can deal with the complex task of finding e.g. major professional national campaign consultants by using membership lists of professional organizations or a snowball-sampling-approach. Disadvantageous, if a sample is not carefully selected, results may be biased. Internet survey research, in particular, is problematic with regard to selecting a representative sample.
If a study does not document its exact research design and instruments, the results are not transparent, which can lead to misunderstandings and misinterpretations. Therefore, the procedural method should explicitly be stated in a study. 
Further challenges when using survey research refer to the statistical assessment and interpretation of answers to open-ended questions as well as the translation and phrasing of questionnaires. In standardized large-scale surveys the accuracy and veracity of answers cannot be assured, since the research relies on the interview partners’ individual self-assessments of the questions and pre-formulated answers.