Opening the Box: What We Already Know and Don't Know Yet About the Response Process in the European Social Survey

• Activity Number: 632
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 8, 2013 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Ineke Stoop*+
• Companies: SCP
• Keywords: paradata ; nonresponse ; cross-national surveys ; nonresponse bias ; fieldwork

Abstract

In the European Social Survey (ESS), a biennial survey on attitudes and values that is conducted in more than 30 European countries, paradata are collected to monitor interviewer performance and the response process, calculate final disposition codes, and assess nonresponse bias. Central specifications aim at highly standardized fieldwork procedures.

Data are collected in face-to-face interviews at the home of the respondents. Due to cross-national differences in sampling frames and recruitment modes, types of survey agencies involved (statistical offices, universities, market research organizations, not for profit organizations), experience and expertise of survey agencies and interviewers, and national practices, it is far from simple to collect high quality paradata in a standardized way.

ESS is also studying the effects of a possible move to a mixed-mode design in the future. This will have a clear impact on the paradata to be collected.

The presentation will focus on the efforts to collect meaningful and comparable paradata in a cross-national survey, how they are used and can be improved.