The Innovation Panel is part of Understanding Society and is used to test different methods for conducting longitudinal surveys. Experiments are carried out, and questions, procedures and methods are tested and used in a context similar to the main Understanding Society survey in order to make that test-bed as realistic as possible. Results from the IP help to develop the main Understanding Society survey and generate important new knowledge for the survey methods community.
Participants are, on the whole, asked the same questions using the same procedures as the main survey. However, the Innovation Panel also includes experiments and methodological tests designed to develop and evaluate methodologies and new content for longitudinal survey research. Each year researchers are invited to submit ideas for experiments through the Innovation Panel Competition. The next IP Competition will open in February 2025.
Methodological experiments
Several methodological experiments were included in Wave 16 of the IP. These included:
- how to measure worries about climate change
- how to measure depression
- the use of e-vouchers for unconditional incentives
- how to encourage responses to the youth survey
- how to obtain information about child development measures
- the effects of incentives on respondents’ participation in a game-like app
- what effect a government logo on envelopes sent to existing respondents had on response rates
New survey content
The IP is also used to test new survey content and questions. In Wave 16 of the IP new content was tested on:
- what constitutes an interesting size effect when measuring people’s psychological state
- people’s expectations of gender discrimination related to work
- the extent and nature of the use of domestic workers
- numeracy and the long-term future
- the extent to which flexible working is stigmatised
- judging the passage of time
- associations between cognitive reflection abilities and politically motivated reasoning
In addition to these, new data was also collected on child development measures from children’s ‘red book’ records, and spatial navigation ability was tested via a game-like app.
You can read about the results of all IP16 experiments in our new working paper.
EmploymentFamily and householdsHealth and wellbeingSurvey methodologyYoung people
