The Innovation Panel Competition is now open and accepting proposals for projects to be included in Wave 19 of the Understanding Society Innovation Panel.
The Innovation Panel Competition gives researchers access to the rich household data in the Understanding Society Innovation Panel, and the benefit of testing new ideas with the support of the Understanding Society team. There are two types of proposal that can be submitted:
- New survey content that will be used to address innovative research questions. The proposed questions can be on any relevant topic and are limited to one minute of questionnaire time.
- Experiments and methodological tests. These could relate to the design of survey instruments (for example, question wording or item order) or survey design features (for example, procedures to reduce non-response or improve fieldwork efficiency).
There are no costs to successful applicants, unless the proposal includes non-standard survey elements, for example task-related incentives or additional mailings. Data collection in this round of the competition will take place in summer and autumn 2026.
The deadline for proposals is Friday 14 March 2025. You can find all the information about the Innovation Panel Competition and how to submit your proposal on the competition web page.
What is the Innovation Panel?
The Innovation Panel is an important and integral part of the design of Understanding Society. It consists of the original sample of around 2,500 persons clustered within households, plus refreshment samples of around 700 persons added in 2011, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2025.
Wave 18 will be going into the field in spring 2025 and will feature a larger-than-usual refreshment.
Participants are, on the whole, asked the same questions, using the same procedures as the main Understanding Society survey. The Innovation Panel also includes experiments and methodological tests designed to develop and evaluate survey methods and new content for longitudinal survey research. You can read about some of the past experiments on the Innovation Panel on our website.
Survey methodology
