ESRA 2025 Preliminary Glance Program

All time references are in CEST

New Data Spaces for the Social Sciences - An Interdisciplinary Program for Survey Innovation in Germany 2
Session Organisers	Professor Cordula Artelt (Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories) Dr Anika Schenck-Fontaine (Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories) Professor Corinna Kleinert (Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories)
Time	Friday 18 July, 11:00 - 12:30
Room	Ruppert 042

To expand our understanding of and have an impact on the major social challenges of the coming decades, including digitization, climate change, growing diversification, pandemics, and war-induced societal changes, the social sciences need to unlock new opportunities for collecting and analyzing data. Many countries have a set of well-established longitudinal survey programs, but surveys are plagued with fundamental challenges related to validity, cost, and sustainability. Therefore, systematic and far-sighted social science research needs to explore the potential of recent technological advances and explore new forms of data, new methods of data acquisition, and new measures of data quality.

Developing and utilizing such new data sources and data infrastructures necessitates the bundling and orchestrating of skills, knowledge, and expertise across different fields of empirical social sciences and computer sciences, which can only be managed by large-scale research programs. To achieve these goals, the German Research Foundation (DFG) has established the long-term infrastructure priority program “New Data Spaces for the Social Sciences” to open up and develop such new data spaces (https://www.new-data-spaces.de/en-us/). Within this program, a series of highly innovative research projects in four main research areas were funded: exploration and integration of different data types, respondent-driven designs, instrument validity, and multimodal data acquisition. The purpose of this session is to introduce this program, present first results of research projects funded within this program, and foster exchange with initiators and researchers who are active in similar programs in other countries.

Keywords: Survey innovation, New Data Spaces, data infrastructure, Germany

Papers

Panel Survey Innovation in a Time of (R)Evolution: The Case of the HRS

Professor Brady T. West (University of Michigan-Ann Arbor) - Presenting Author

The panel survey data collection environment is currently in an active state of evolution. There are more pressures for rapid information, increasing constraints on budgets and resources combined with increasing costs, and data quality is at risk through declining response rates and maybe more importantly increased risk for bias. Additionally, survey organizations have been challenged by circumstances like the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing distrust in government, and difficult hiring environments for data collection staff. In response, survey organizations are exploring an array of enhancements to data collection operations, additional integration of administrative data in many parts of the survey life cycle, development of tailored contact strategies and adaptive and responsive designs, and changing uses of mode and incentives to achieve data quality objectives. In this talk, I will highlight a series of recent methodological enhancements in the long-running United States panel study known as the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), each of which demonstrate the types of evolution that are necessary for panel surveys to continue their scientific relevance.

The Future of Survey Data Collection in the UK

Professor Peter Lynn (University of Essex) - Presenting Author

This presentation will provide an overview of the work, achievements, and vision of Survey Futures, a major initiative in the UK designed to future-proof social survey data collection (www.surveyfutures.net). Survey Futures addresses a number of challenges that are also of interest to New Data Spaces for the Social Sciences, including those related to the costs and sustainability of survey data collection, data quality and new modes and methods. Tools and guidance will be provided for survey commissioners, survey agencies and survey data users, and we also hope to influence the debate about the future role of surveys within a changing data landscape.

Opportunities and Challenges for the Future of Surveys

Professor Pamela Davis-Kean (University of Michigan) - Presenting Author

Surveys have long been the primary avenue for gathering data on the beliefs and behaviors of individuals across the world. However, in the past decades, individuals who provide their time to answer questions and provide us with information on their lives have dwindled to the point where it is becoming difficult to ascertain the sample sizes large enough to analyze the data which is especially problematic for sub-groups of interest. Response rates have been declining for a while but took a particularly dramatic hit during the COVID-19 pandemic years and have rebounded only slightly over the last few years. These lowered response rates threaten to reduce the effectiveness of surveys to help researchers make inferences about the population. This has led to a "crisis" in survey research on figuring out ways to do surveys in the future that represent the populations of interest.

For decades, the “gold standard” of creating new randomized population surveys has been to randomize address information and connect with respondents by knocking on doors and asking those who live at these addresses to participate in a given survey. However, this method is not longer garnering the response rates of 20 years ago where you could expect to get around 80% of the sample to participate in a study. The average response rates using this method are now considered very good at 50% but are generally lower. Web surveys have been used for decades to try and find another “entrance” into the household but have consistently low response rates with many national panels only obtaining around 5-6% of respondents who agree to take the survey. This presentation will discuss new ideas and opportunities for increasing response rates in surveys as well as the importance of sustaining data infrastructure for societal challenges in the future.