The paper uses data from the first three waves of the German study Health Behavior and Injuries in School Age (GUS) to demonstrate how a record linkage procedure can improve matching rates of subject-generated ID-codes (SGICs) in panel studies. This post-processing technique uses a fuzzy-string-merge to match IDs that do not fit perfectly but are very similar. Other time-constant variables in the dataset were used to verify the matches. With this technique, more than 5 percent of previously unmatched cases could be paired up.

Received wisdom in survey practice suggests that using web mode in the first wave of a panel study is not as effective as using interviewers. Based on data from a two-wave mode experiment for the Swiss Household Panel (SHP), this study examines how the use of online data collection in the first wave affects participation in the second wave, and if so, who is affected. The experiment compared the traditional SHP design of telephone interviewing to a mixed-mode design combining a household questionnaire by telephone with individual questionnaires by web and to a web-only design for the household and individual …