Panel attrition is a major problem for panel survey infrastructures. When panelists attrit from a panel survey, the infrastructure is faced with (i) the costs of recruiting new respondents, (ii) a broken timeline of existing data, and (iii) potential nonresponse bias. Previous studies have shown that panel attrition can be predicted using respondents’ response time. However, response time has been operationalised in multiple ways, such as (i) the number of days it takes respondents to participate, (ii) the number of contact attempts made by the data collection organisation, and (iii) the proportion of respondents who have participated prior to a …

Monitoring interviewer performance during data collection is essential for ensuring optimal performance at the interviewer level, thereby leading to improved data collection parameters in areas such as effort and efficiency. Paradata are widely utilized to enhance typical measures of performance, such as response rates, and provide a more nuanced view of interviewer performance characteristics. We describe a paradata tool developed to monitor interviewer performance in real time: the Interviewer Performance Profile (IPP). Daily data updates allow for ongoing monitoring to detect areas of performance concern as well as areas of improvement over time. Additionally, the flexible nature of the IPP …

As a self-administered survey mode, web surveys allow respondents to temporarily leave the survey page and switch to another web page in a different browser tab or to another window/app. This form of sequential multitasking has the potential to disrupt the response process and reduce data quality if respondents become distracted (Krosnick, 1991; Sendelbah et al., 2016). Browser data indicating respondents leaving the survey page allow non-reactive measurement of their multitasking. We investigated the prevalence of page switching, number of switching events and time spent absent per event with respect to respondents’ characteristics and devices used. Furthermore, we analysed the …

Using paradata to modify design features during fieldwork is the earmark of responsive designs (Groves & Heeringa, 2006). One objective of responsive approaches is to improve the composition of the final sample by gaining the participation of nonrespondents. A simple but innovative attempt at realizing such a response intervention was undertaken during the fieldwork of PIAAC Germany 2012. Different groups of nonrespondents were identified for follow-up efforts. With a view to the outcome measures of PIAAC, basic skills of the adult population, two groups were focused: Non-nationals and sample persons with low educational attainment. To identify these groups, different sources …

This article investigates how different strategies used by interviewers when recording interviewer observations relate to observation accuracy. Before conducting interviews in a refreshment sample of the general population for the German PASS panel study, interviewers were asked to observe one key target variable of the study — whether a household is at risk of poverty or not — for all sampled households. In addition, interviewers recorded what strategies they had used to make their observations. For responding households, we assessed the accuracy of the observation by comparing it to an actual survey measure of poverty risk. Separate multilevel regression models …