COVID-19 pandemic and panel attrition in Understanding Society

Abstract

This report presents some indicators of the representativeness of Understanding Society at waves 10, 11 and 12, which cover the period immediately before COVID-19 and the two years following the pandemic outbreak. The first objective of the paper is to analyse the response rates during this period in order to identify possible pandemic effects. The second objective of the paper is to assess the performance of cross-sectional weights to reduce any deviances in the sample profile that occurred during the pandemic. The results show that response rates slightly dropped, but the sample profile remained unchanged.