Assessing the risk of mode effects: review of proposed survey questions for waves 7-10 of Understanding Society

Abstract

Learning more about mode effects is important, particularly being able to identify and take account of these effects when analysing survey data. This project contributes to this effort. Researchers at NatCen Social Research developed a set of criteria to assess the risks of mode effects for questions to be included in Understanding Society waves 7 -10, excluding those included in the self-completion module. All questions were assessed and assigned a rating that identified whether the question was at no, low, medium or high risk of mode effects. This report describes the development of the risk assessment approach.