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1. Switching from telephone to web‐first mixed‐mode data collection: Results from the Transition into Adulthood Supplement to the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics

   https://doi.org/10.1111/rssa.12840  

   Sastry, Narayan ; McGonagle, Katherine A. ( January 2022 , Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society))

   We conducted an experiment to evaluate the effects on fieldwork outcomes and interview mode of switching to a web-first mixed-mode data collection design (self-administered web interview and interviewer-administered telephone interview) from a telephone-only design. We examine whether the mixed-mode option leads to better survey outcomes, based on response rates, fieldwork outcomes, interview quality and costs. We also examine respondent characteristics associated with completing a web interview rather than a telephone interview. Our mode experiment study was conducted in the 2019 wave of the Transition into Adulthood Supplement (TAS) to the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). TAS collects information biennially from approximately 3,000 young adults in PSID families. The shift to a mixed-mode design for TAS was aimed at reducing costs and increasing respondent cooperation. We found that for mixed-mode cases compared to telephone only cases, response rates were higher, interviews were completed faster and with lower effort, the quality of the interview data appeared better, and fieldwork costs were lower. A clear set of respondent characteristics reflecting demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, technology availability and use, time use, and psychological health were associated with completing a web interview rather than a telephone interview.
2. Effects of the COVID-19 crisis on survey fieldwork: Experience and lessons from two major supplements to the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics

   https://doi.org/10.18148/srm/2020.v14i2.7752  

   Sastry, N. ; McGonagle, K.A. ; Fomby, P. ( January 2020 , Survey research methods)

   Two major supplements to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) were in the field during the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States: the 2019 waves of the PSID Child Development Supplement (CDS-19) and the PSID Transition into Adulthood Supplement (TAS-19). Both CDS-19 and TAS-19 abruptly terminated all face-to-face fieldwork and, for TAS-19, shifted interviewers from working in a centralized call center to working from their homes. Overall, COVID-19 had a net negative effect on response rates in CDS-19 and terminated all home visits that represented an important study component. For TAS-19, the overall effect of Covid-19 was uncertain, but negative. The costs were high of adapting to COVID-19 and providing paid time-off benefits to staff affected by the pandemic. Longitudinal surveys, such as CDS, TAS, and PSID, that span the pandemic will provide valuable information on its life course and intergenerational consequences, making ongoing data collection of vital importance.
3. Multiple Imputation with Massive Data: An Application to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics

   https://doi.org/10.1093/jssam/smab038  

   Si, Yajuan ; Heeringa, Steve ; Johnson, David ; Little, Roderick J ; Liu, Wenshuo ; Pfeffer, Fabian ; Raghunathan, Trivellore ( October 2021 , Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology)

   Abstract Multiple imputation (MI) is a popular and well-established method for handling missing data in multivariate data sets, but its practicality for use in massive and complex data sets has been questioned. One such data set is the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), a longstanding and extensive survey of household income and wealth in the United States. Missing data for this survey are currently handled using traditional hot deck methods because of the simple implementation; however, the univariate hot deck results in large random wealth fluctuations. MI is effective but faced with operational challenges. We use a sequential regression/chained-equation approach, using the software IVEware, to multiply impute cross-sectional wealth data in the 2013 PSID, and compare analyses of the resulting imputed data with those from the current hot deck approach. Practical difficulties, such as non-normally distributed variables, skip patterns, categorical variables with many levels, and multicollinearity, are described together with our approaches to overcoming them. We evaluate the imputation quality and validity with internal diagnostics and external benchmarking data. MI produces improvements over the existing hot deck approach by helping preserve correlation structures, such as the associations between PSID wealth components and the relationships between the household net worthmore »and sociodemographic factors, and facilitates completed data analyses with general purposes. MI incorporates highly predictive covariates into imputation models and increases efficiency. We recommend the practical implementation of MI and expect greater gains when the fraction of missing information is large.« less
4. The Longitudinal Revolution: Sociological Research at the 50-Year Milestone of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics

   https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-121919-054821  

   Pfeffer, Fabian T. ; Fomby, Paula ; Insolera, Noura ( July 2020 , Annual Review of Sociology)

   The US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2018. Initially designed to assess the nation's progress in combatting poverty, PSID's scope broadened quickly to a variety of topics and fields of inquiry. To date, sociologists are the second-most frequent users of PSID data after economists. Here, we describe the ways in which PSID's history reflects shifts in social science scholarship and funding priorities over half a century; take stock of the most important sociological breakthroughs it facilitated, in particular those relying on the longitudinal structure of the data; and critically assess the unique advantages and limitations of PSID and surveys like it for today's sociological scholarship.
5. The Effects of an Incentive Boost on Response Rates, Fieldwork Effort, and Costs across Two Waves of a Panel Study

   McGonagle, Katherine A ( January 2020 , Methoden Daten Analysen)

   This paper describes the association between an incentive boost and data collection outcomes across two waves of a long-running panel study. In a recent wave, with the aim of achieving response rate goals, all remaining sample members were offered a substantial incentive increase in the final weeks of data collection, despite uncertainty about potential effects on fieldwork outcomes in the following wave. The analyses examine response rates and the average number of interviewer attempts to complete the interview in the waves during and after the incentive boost, and provide an estimate of the cost of the incentives and fieldwork in the waves during and following the boost. The findings provide suggestive evidence that the use of variable incentive strategies from one wave to the next in the context of an ongoing panel study may be an effective strategy to reduce nonresponse and may yield enduring positive effects on subsequent data collection outcomes.