CSR online panel

Compared to traditional survey methods, online panel surveys can effectively reduce survey costs and enhance survey efficiency. Moreover, when online panels are constructed using probability-based recruitment, they enable researchers to measure coverage and nonresponse errors. These measurements can be utilized to properly weight and adjust survey data, thereby reducing biases. Consequently, since 2017, CSR has been building a probability-based online panel, inviting respondents who have completed surveys to join as panel members.

Member Sources

Recruitment Surveys

The CSR online panel recruits members through probability surveys conducted by CSR, which include face-to-face, phone, and online surveys via Short Message Service (SMS). The majority target respondents aged 18 and older, with some specifically focusing on those aged 20 and above. These surveys cover a wide range of research areas, such as social, political, communication, legal, public health, environmental science, and more.

Sampling Methods

The surveys for panel recruitment use probability sampling methods. Specifically, face-to-face interviews adopt a stratified multi-stage Probability Proportional to Size (PPS) sampling method, while phone surveys or online SMS surveys utilize a stratified multi-stage Random Digit Dialing (RDD) sampling method.

Recruitment and Review

Recruitment

The CSR online panel follows a post-interview recruitment process integrated into existing surveys. At the end of an existing survey, there is a recruitment questions directly asking respondents if they would be willing to become a member of the CSR online panel and continue receiving survey invitations. Precisely, there are two methods for member recruitment: one method involves directly asking respondents at the end of the survey about their willingness to become panel members; the other method follows a two-stage recruitment process outlined as follows.

Stage 1: Initial Recruitment

After completing an existing survey, respondents are asked if they would like to join CSR online panel as members and provide contact information, such as an email address or phone number. Those who agree will subsequently be contacted for stage2—the profile survey.

Stage 2: Profile Survey

Respondents who agreed in Stage 1 are formally invited via email or SMS to complete the profile survey and join the panel, including providing basic demographic information such as gender, year of birth, educational attainment, etc. Concurrently, CSR informs them about the associated benefits and notifies them that they will receive invitations to participate in various surveys.

Upon consenting to become members and providing essential personal details, CSR cross-references this information with the responses from the surveys they completed to verify if they match the same individuals.

Annual Review

To ensure the mechanism of probability-based panels and survey quality, CSR conducts an annual review at the start of each year. This review includes verifying member identities and evaluating the historical data quality of members.

Weights and Outcome Rates

Members of this panel are recruited from several nationally representative surveys, leading to a rich pool of diverse information. This diversity allows for tracking both the cumulative response rate and the regular response rate, providing insights into the overall response dynamics of the survey. Furthermore, this information can be used for subsequent survey data weighting. The available information is outlined below.

Final weight

Most recruitment surveys calculate final weights for respondents to address unequal selection probabilities in the sample design and ensure the sample matches the population of interest. These weights are a combination of design weights and calibration weights (demographic weighting).

Recruitment rate

The rate of individual recruitment efforts in each recruitment survey.

Profile rate

The rate of respondents who agreed to join the panel based on the recruitment effort and completed the profile survey.

Retention rate

The proportion of panel members who remain on the panel at the time of survey sample assignment out of all panel members.