ESRA 2027 sessions by theme

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Declining response rates, rising costs of data collection, and expanding technological opportunities have led many national and international survey programmes to transition from face-to-face (F2F) to self-completion (SC) designs. While SC-designs offer important advantages, they have also intensified the debate around the representation of certain demographic groups.

While evidence suggests that SC-designs generally achieve good representation across age groups—particularly younger respondents—and across gender, individuals with low educational attainment, low political interest, or a migration background are often underrepresented in SC-designs. International comparative research further shows substantial cross-country variation in the existence and magnitude of these representation patterns. This raises important questions about the implications and consequences of employing SC-designs.

This session invites empirical and theoretical contributions that improve our understanding of representation in SC-designs and identify practical approaches to improving it. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Methodological evaluation: How can representation in SC-designs be captured, monitored, or benchmarked?
Composition and bias: How do SC-designs affect sample composition? How do representation patterns affect substantive estimates and survey quality?
Implications for time-series and time-comparative analysis: What are the implications of moving from F2F- to SC-designs for trend analyses, time-series, and cross-national comparability?
Measures for improving representation: What recruitment, communication, sampling, incentive, questionnaire design, fieldwork, or weighting strategies help reduce representation gaps in SC-designs?
Comparative perspectives: What explains heterogeneity in SC-representation within or across countries, and what can be learned from comparative evidence?