We assess whether the probability of a sample member participating at a particular wave of a panel survey is greater if the same interviewer is deployed as at the previous wave. Previous research on this topic mainly uses non-experimental data. Consequently, a) interviewer change is generally...

This paper describes the design of the sample for “Understanding Societyâ€. The sample consists of five components. The largest component is a newly-selected general population sample. The other four components are an ethnic minority ‘boost’ sample, a general population...

This paper outlines the strategy for the development and provision of analysis weights for Understanding Society. The strategy is placed within the context of a number of practical and statistical issues in the context of a survey with such a complex design, involving multiple waves, samples,...

The overall sample design for Understanding Society has been described in an earlier working paper in this series (Lynn 2009). This paper describes the special measures taken to boost the sample of members of five key minority ethnic groups in Great Britain. A new method was developed to...

This article describes a randomised experiment with mixed-mode survey designs in the context of a household panel survey. The experiment was designed to allow comparisons between two alternative mixed-mode designs (telephone interviewing plus face-to-face interviewing) and a unimode design...

Mobile phone survey interviewing is becoming increasingly prevalent, so it is important to understand how it affects measurement error. We link cognitive response process theory (Tourangeau et al 2000) to theories of mode effects to build a comprehensive framework that identifies ways in which...

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...