Innovations in Survey Sampling

Abstract

Declining response rates, increasing unit nonresponse, and weakening sample frames affect the representativeness of survey data collections. One example is the predictive power of surveys in electoral research producing unreliable results (e.g., Callegaro, & Gasperoni, 2008; Erikson, & Wlezien, 2012; Hanretty et al., 2015; Sturgis et al. 2016; YouGov, 2017). We invite papers that address this issue and propose predictive models or alternative methods to better capture politics or political behaviour addressing the representation side of the TSE framework. Push-to-web attempts foster online data collection, which is quick and easy, but the non-probability samples typically lack “representativeness” of the target population (Sohlberg et al., 2017; Toepoel, 2016; Callegaro et al., 2015). This may have severe implications for political research and policy making. In addition, online data collection also poses challenges to measurement. While enhancing anonymity and privacy to an extent that respondents may feel more encouraged to report more sensitive political behaviours or attitudes than in an interviewer administered mode, traditional measures of political attitudes and behaviour, such as political knowledge, may be more difficult to capture due to a lack of control over respondents. We encourage panellists to address the opportunities and challenges of online data collection for political research.