The Future of Online Data Collection in Social Surveys: Challenges, Developments and Applications
本文探讨社会调查转向在线数据收集的挑战与发展，包括技术变革、疫情加速转型及对调查设计的影响，适合关注调查方法创新的研究者。
The future of online data collection in social surveys: Challenges, developments and applicationsWe live in a digital age with widespread use of technologies in everyday life.Technologies change very rapidly and affect all aspects of life, including surveys and their designs and implementation.Data collection organisations in many countries are undergoing a paradigm shift in data collection.As a result, social surveys, including censuses, continue to experience major transformations.Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, survey agencies had started moving towards online data collection, as response rates in social surveys had been falling for decades and survey costs were increasing (de Leeuw, 2018).Other trends of increasing internet use and mobile device ownership have also impacted on this shift in data collection methods (Eurostat, 2019).For example, in the UK 2021 Census, 89% of households responded online which exceeded the original target of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) of 75% online household response (ONS, 2021).While some UK social surveys have already moved to mixed-mode data collection as a cost-saving initiative, such as Understanding Society (the UK Household Longitudinal Study), some are in the testing phase or are in the process of transforming to designs that encourage participants to respond online as the primary mode, such as the Labour Force Survey (LFS) in the United Kingdom.The COVID-19 pandemic has had an additional large impact on survey data collection, as face-to-face surveys became impossible to conduct.As a result, the pandemic led to rapid changes and survey agencies across the world have been faced with profound transformations of data collection and survey practices in a short period of time.Some surveys had to be designed and/or implemented within very short timeframes (e.g. the UK COVID-19 Infection Survey or the Mannheim Corona Study (MCS)).The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to move surveys online in unprecedented ways and expedited existing transformation plans.However, not many social surveys made the transition unless it was planned for prior to the pandemic, such as in the case of the British Election Survey (BES) or the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA).The majority of high-quality surveys either paused or postponed data collection (e.g. the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyle (Natsal) or Health Survey for England (HSE)) or moved to telephone mode if telephone numbers of respondents were available (e.g. the Crime Survey for England and Wales or the National Survey for Wales (NSW)).This demonstrates the need to investigate barriers to transitioning to online data collection further.While online data collection offers many opportunities, it also brings new challenges in design and implementation of social surveys.Transitions to online data collection have an impact on various aspects of social surveys, for both cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys.These areas include coverage issues, availability of sampling frames, recruitment approaches including providing opportunities for participation to offline populations, data quality, measurement issues,