The aims of the research programme are:
- to provide understanding of the key properties of alternative approaches to data collection in areas where these are not yet fully understood, with a view to providing guidance and tools for implementation of good practice approaches in the short- to medium-term;
- to explore possibilities for game-changing advances in other areas of survey data collection practice, recognising that these advances might only be realised in the medium- to long-term.
Seven research strands were identified for Phase 1 of the project, each with a proposed research programme. A second phase of research projects was commissioned in Spring 2024, which created two new research strands. The nine research strands are:
- Research Strand 1: Enhanced sampling frames and procedures
- Research Strand 2: Post-pandemic role of interviewers
- Research Strand 3: Video-Interviewing
- Research Strand 4: Methods for surveys without field interviewers
- Research Strand 5: Complex measurement in self-completion surveys
- Research Strand 6: Reducing and evaluating mode effects
- Research Strand 7: Data integration
- Research Strand 8: Addressing Non-Response
- Research Strand 9: Generative AI for Questionnaire Design
- Phase 2 Research Programme