Following Banning's (2002) terms, the Upper Colca survey work was a combination of all three survey types. The survey was prospective because it attempted to document a little known region and find the majority of the large sites associated with the obsidian source, but it was also statistical because survey zones were deliberately stratified so as to permit predictive statements about the use of space throughout the study region. Finally, the Upper Colca research also involved survey for spatial structure because it consisted of three large blocks within which the land was thoroughly surveyed so as to document intersite relationships and travel routes.

Many contemporary archaeological surveys will claim to have conducted "100% survey" of large regions, but then they will have had a survey interval of 30m or more between surveyors. Surveys focused on documenting complex societies with standing architecture are particularly likely to refer to their widely-spaced surveys as "100% surveys". A wide surveyor interval is actually a non-explicit kind of sampling that de-prioritizes smaller sites and those lacking standing architecture, resulting in an often unstated bias in the results. Subsequently, the region is considered "surveyed" though many smaller sites falling between transects were surely missed. While smaller sites are found in these widely spaced surveys, it is only if the site happens to fall across one of the surveyor lines. More realistically, such a survey method is somewhat successful because the surveyors cover a lot of ground but then they will veer off their route to visit high likelihood locations for sites such as rock shelters and lake shores; a technique belonging to the realm of prospection survey.