Where the household grid and at least one parent completes online, a youth self-completion questionnaire is usually posted to the household. In the design at Wave 17, the invitation letter included a URL to the online youth survey and introducing it as a ‘new, redesigned, more fun’ survey on which the young people’s feedback would be sought to improve it further.
The paper copy was posted with the invitation letter, as usual. At the second stage, if the youth self-completion had not been completed within one month, a reminder letter followed but it included a link to the online survey and the accompanying motivating message.
Uptake of the online survey vs. the paper booklet can be compared with the IP16 ‘default’ youth questionnaire design, albeit these were not tested against each other experimentally.
The online Youth survey was scripted by the Understanding Society in-house team, rather than the fieldwork agency.
See also: 7.26 Youth online survey.
