As far as is practical, the design, content and data collection procedures are the same as the main Understanding Society survey.
The Innovation Panel has multiple experimental studies running at each wave, in which individuals, households, interviewers or areas are randomly assigned to a particular survey instrument or procedure. Care is taken to ensure that the different experiments do not affect each other.
The Innovation panel Wave 16 data is now available from the UK Data Service: Innovation Panel, Waves 1-16, 2008-2023. SN6849.
Researchers can also use Innovation Panel data for non-experimental work. You can find out more about the dataset in the User Guide (pdf 3.0 MB)
Experiments in Wave 16
Measuring flexibility stigma
This experiment uses a vignette design to examine what the rise in homeworking practices mean with regards to gender inequality in the labour market. Employed respondents between ages 18-65 were shown three vignettes, all with the same basic narrative describing candidates for a job based on their background and work circumstances, which included their gender, parenthood status, hybrid working practice, prevalence of hybrid working in the company, and the company policy. Respondents were asked their views on the worker, whether they’d recommend the candidate for the job, their perception of how committed the candidate is to their work, how productive they are, and how much of a team-player they are.
Cognitive reflection and politically motivated reasoning
This experiment uses a variation of a known cognitive reflection test (CRT) to see whether politically motivated reasoning is a manifestation of heuristic or deliberative thinking. The CRT is a four-question battery asking cognitive ability-like questions. The political questions ask about a petition to require a verified identification to open a social media account and leverages people’s identification with ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain’ following the Brexit vote. There are three versions of the requirement for the verified identification using these – one version is ‘the petition was popular in areas that voted Remain’, the second substitutes ‘Remain’ with ‘Leave’, the third control version does not contain any phrase to prime respondents.
Robustness of climate change worries measurement
This experiment compares two versions of a single question on worry about climate change to see whether respondents worries partly capture their valuation of the welfare of future generations. The climate change worry question in Understanding Society specifically refers to personal worry: ‘the effects of climate change are too far in the future to really worry me’. This experiment directly compares this version of the question with an alternative that changes the last phrase from ‘worry me‘ to ‘worry about’.
Understanding of the long-term future
This experiment explores how good people’s grasp of the long-term, rather than short-term future, whether this understanding is related to their own remaining life expectancy, and if this understanding depends on whether it’s measurement is framed in a specific context, such as climate change. Respondents were asked questions that focused on interest compounding and on rising sea levels. Questions asked about the compounding impacts at 5, 30 and 100 year time spans.
Mental health questions comparisons
The main survey questions about the diagnosis of health conditions remained close to static for the first nine waves of the survey. At Wave 10 and Wave 14 of the main survey the question wording about whether a doctor had ever diagnosed a mental health condition changed. Reviewing the data, there is some evidence that the change in wording has resulted in changes in prevalence. This experiment compares the three versions of the questions; pre Wave 10, with Wave 10 changes, and with Wave 14 changes.
Asking for child Red Book pictures
Child development up to the age of two is a key determinant of child and adult health. However, directly and regularly measuring physical health is invasive and time consuming for families, and costly for the Study. We therefore wished to investigate whether it is possible to collect such data from administrative records parents should hold for the child in the ‘red book’.
The experiment asked respondents with children under 16 in the household to upload a photo or provide red book information. Based on IP15 data on household composition, half were allocated to being asked to provide photos online ahead of the interview, this request was sent to them four weeks before the interview invitation. The other half were informed in their advanced letter they would be asked within the interview. Those in the pre-interview group that did not provide the photo or information were asked to do so in the interview along with the second group. Similarly, any new parents identified in the IP16 interview were asked to provide a photo or information within the interview. Parents completing the interview by telephone were asked to provide data as part of the interview.
Those with children under one years old were asked to upload a picture, and if not, report from the red book, the height and weight of children at 6-8 weeks or the closest date to that. Respondents with children aged one or older were asked for these for when the children were one year old or the closest time to that.
Spatial cognition mobile app game
We asked respondents to download and use a game app for their smart phones. The data derived from playing this game can be used to measure spatial cognition, which is important in several aspects of life and is shown to be related to general cognition. This app is a game and is intended to be fun and less work than other app studies that IP respondents have been asked to complete in the past. The data collected by this app game are available in file P_SQH_RESULTS_IP.
Family and householdsHealth and wellbeingSurvey methodologyTransport and environment
