Please note this event will take place online via Zoom.
Speakers: Alexandra Castillo and Patrick Moynihan (Pew Research Center)
Pew Research Center has fielded the annual, cross-national Global Attitudes Survey for two decades, surveying publics in around 20 to 40 countries per year, relying on probability-based phone and face-to-face methods outside of the United States.
However, growing challenges with respondent accessibility, data quality, in-country capacity, cost concerns and - more recently - the global pandemic have spurred the Center to consider alternative modes of data collection for its cross-national projects, including the use of online probability-based international panels.
To assess the viability of this mode of data collection outside of the United States, including its comparability to long-term designs and estimates using interviewer-administered surveying, the Center explored select panels in parallel to our 2020 and 2021 waves of the Global Attitudes Survey and successfully fielded the annual Australia survey on a panel in 2022.
The Center’s approach in testing panels in 2020 and 2021 was to field simultaneous surveys, using our standard random-digit dial (RDD) computer-assisted telephone-interview (CATI) surveys for reporting, while fielding nationally representative, probability-based online panels for internal research.
The RDD questionnaire for each country was adapted for self-administered online completion with the goal of drawing comparisons between sample demographics and attitudinal measures. The panel questionnaires also include some experimentation, such as the display of volunteered response options and response option rotation. The results presented are based on multiple surveys conducted in Australia and the United Kingdom.
This presentation will provide insight into the cross-comparability of results from these independent panels, considering sample performance, patterns in nonresponse and design experimentation.
Additionally, we will consider how the cross-national mode change affects within-country trends: the differences in measurement across modes, such as scaled responses and item nonresponse; the comparability of sample composition across the phone and panel surveys; and, ultimately, the viability of continuing time-series estimates on specific measures using a different mode.
Finally, we discuss possible strategies to preserve cross-national comparisons for future rounds of this international project with face-to-face, phone and online data collection as options.
About the speakers:
Patrick Moynihan has been associate director of international research methods for over five years, providing methodological leadership across the Center’s cross-national projects.
Prior to joining the Center, Moynihan was the survey methodologist at the U.S. Department of State, assistant director of the Program on Survey Research at Harvard University and senior polling analyst at ABC News, continuing as an election night consultant as recently as the 2020 elections in the United States.
He served on the AAPOR/WAPOR Task Force Report on Quality in Comparative Surveys as well as the Standards Committee of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. Moynihan received his doctorate in sociology from SUNY Stony Brook.
Alexandra Castillo is a research methodologist in international research methods at Pew Research Center. She advises on complex sample design, survey implementation and data quality assessment for international projects across the Center.
Castillo received her doctorate in political science at the Ohio State University, where she specialized in comparative politics and political psychology.
She regularly presents at conferences, and she is a member of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) and the European Survey Research Association (ESRA). Alexandra was the 2021 Secretary/Membership Chair of DC-AAPOR.
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