Social surveys—the kind that track employment, health, and public opinion—are becoming harder to run as people stop answering their doors and phones. This project brings together 39 researchers from 14 UK institutions to figure out which new methods actually work: pushing people to respond online, nudging them with doorstep visits, or switching to video interviews. The problem is urgent. Pre-pandemic survey methods are failing, and commissioners are already changing their requirements. Meanwhile, the pool of skilled interviewers is shrinking, and no one has systematically compared the quality of data from these newer approaches. Without better methods, policymakers lose the reliable evidence they need to design housing policy, allocate healthcare funding, or track inequality. If this collaboration succeeds, it will produce practical guidance for anyone who commissions, runs, or uses surveys. That means more accurate data on who is struggling, who is thriving, and what services are needed—without wasting money on methods that miss whole groups of people. The team will also train a new generation of survey professionals, ensuring the UK can keep producing the kind of high-quality social data that quietly underpins most public policy decisions.
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The survey data collection community is facing severe challenges in implementing surveys using pre-pandemic approaches. There are knowledge gaps regarding the advantages and disadvantages of different data collection techniques and approaches such as push-to-web, knock-to-nudge and video-interviewing, and particularly in the mixed-mode context. And there is limited capacity both of skilled interviewers and of research professionals. Recent developments are leading to changes in commissioner requirements for face-to-face data collection as well as having implications for fieldwork costs and the role of interviewers. In several areas of survey methodology, the need for development of improved methods and the need to identify and communicate best practice is urgent. The Survey Data Collection Methods Collaboration (SDCMC) is a response to these challenges and aims to deliver a step change in approaches to collecting population survey data in the UK to ensure that it will remain possible to carry out high quality social surveys of the kinds required by the public and academic sectors to monitor and understand society, and to provide an evidence base for policy. It will do this primarily through a rigorous programme of research focused on ensuring large-scale social surveys in the UK can innovate and adapt in a changing environment and continue to deliver high quality and inclusive data. The primary aim of the programme of work is to assess the quality implications of the most important survey design choices relevant to future UK surveys and provide good practice guidance and practical training materials, while a secondary aim is to identify promising ways to improve the capacity and skillset of both interviewers and research professionals and take steps towards making those improvements. The SDCMC will generate a range of research and training outputs and will engage in a programme of dissemination and promotion activities. Outputs will have a strong practical orientation, consisting of good practice guidance for survey design, survey implementation, survey commissioners and survey data users, all backed up by rigorous and well-documented research and with a range of associated activities to ensure that the lessons are disseminated to all relevant stakeholders and, where appropriate, embedded in institutional practice in a timely manner. The project will also seek to enable a whole community dialogue and collaborative response to wider strategic challenges and issues, as well as incorporating a strong training and capacity building component. To realise the vision of the SDCMC will require leadership, commitment and active participation of a broad range of stakeholders including those who commission surveys, those who implement them, those who use survey data and those involved in research and development of survey methods. Constructive dialogue and collaboration will be crucial to the successful delivery of the ambitious range of activities and outputs that we envisage. We have assembled an experienced project team including academics and survey practitioners (39 people from 14 institutions), who are committed to the necessary constructive collaboration and we will engage a wider range of other stakeholders during the course of the grant to ensure that our outputs directly benefit a wide range of audiences. Impact will be achieved not only on survey research and survey practice but also on a broad range of disciplines within the social sciences and beyond which employ social survey data for analysis through raised awareness and knowledge of issues and opportunities.
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