With decreasing survey response rates, increased costs, and tightened survey budgets, the linking of administrative records to survey data is seen as an important tool for research. The current study analyzes consent decisions in the first wave of Understanding Society: the UK Household...

The presence of an interviewer is hypothesised to motivate respondents to generate an accurate answer and reduce task difficulty, but also to reduce the privacy of the reporting situation. The prevalence of indicators of satisficing (e.g., non-differentiation, acquiescence, middle categories,...

Whether questions and answers are transmitted between interviewer and respondent by visual or aural communication can affect the responses given. We hypothesise that communication channel can affect either the respondent's understanding of the question or the tendency to satisfice. These effects...

This paper presents some preliminary findings from Wave 6 of the Innovation Panel (IP6) of Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study. Understanding Society is a major panel survey in the UK. In March 2013, the sixth wave of the Innovation Panel went into the field. IP6 used a...

This paper presents some preliminary findings from Wave 5 of the Innovation Panel (IP5) of Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study. Understanding Society is a major panel survey in the UK. In February 2012, the fifth wave of the Innovation Panel went into the field. IP5 used a...

To date, face-to-face interviewing has been the primary mode of data collection for Understanding Society. There may be advantages in instead collecting data online where possible. Primarily, this should bring a reduction in data collection costs. There are, however, concerns that response rates...

This study draws on two previously-separate strands of methodological research, one on the effect of the content of letters to sample members on response rates, and one on targeted respondent communications. We test targeted appeals in prenotification and invitation letters in a panel survey,...

We examine whether propensity to participate in a web-CAPI mixed-mode survey is influenced by being contacted by email in addition to mail. In panel surveys, researchers can ask at each wave for an email address, but there is little evidence regarding the value of doing so. Using data from a...

We consider the effect of a wave of mixed-mode data collection (telephone and face-to-face), in an otherwise face-to-face survey, on panel attrition and the extent to which this effect is dependent on the nature of the mode-switch protocol.  Findings are reported from an experiment. One...

We consider the effect of a wave of mixed-mode data collection (telephone and face-to-face), in an otherwise face-to-face survey, on panel attrition and the extent to which this effect is dependent on the nature of the mode-switch protocol. Findings are reported from an experiment on a survey in...