Understanding Society: minimising selection biases in data collection using mobile apps

Abstract

Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study has a programme of research and development that underpins innovations in data collection methods. One of our current focuses is on using mobile applications to collect additional data that supplement data collected in annual interviews. To date, we have used mobile apps to collect data on consumer expenditure, well‐being, anthropometrics and cognition. In this paper, we review the potential barriers to data collection using mobile apps and experimental evidence collected with the Understanding Society Innovation Panel, on what can be done to reduce these barriers.

A symposium on Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study: introduction

“…At wave 1, over 50,000 adult interviews were conducted, all face-to-face. At wave 2, the sample size increased with the inclusion of 10 See Jäckle et al (2023a).…”

“…For example, using data from Understanding Society and the BHPS, Bencsik, Halliday and Mazumder (2023) investigate intergenerational mobility in health in the UK. They find that parental 44 Al Baghal et al, 2020Baghal et al, , 2021b 45 Jäckle et al, 2023a. 46 Jäckle, Burton and Couper, 2019;Jäckle et al, 2023b. 47 Benzeval, 2019. mental health holds more influence over their children's health status than parental physical health, and that this influence becomes more pronounced during the child's teenage years.…”

“…One aspect of this is a separate sample for experimentation, the Innovation Panel; this has a design and content that largely mirrors that of the main survey, but it provides a basis for methodological testing (and also runs an annual competition for researchers to propose their own experiments or novel content). Jäckle, Burton and Couper (2023a) illustrate Understanding Society's evidence-based approach to innovation through a discussion of a particular area of current methodological research: the collection of data using mobile apps. Mobile apps offer the possibility of collecting more granular and/or more frequent data from participants.…”

“…However, a key issue in realising this potential is selective participation of study members in mobile app data collection. Jäckle et al (2023a) discuss what has been learned, through careful study and experimentation, about the barriers to, and determinants of respondent participant in mobile app data collection.…”