Understanding Society: minimizing selection biases in data collection using mobile apps

Abstract

The UK Household Longitudinal Study: Understanding Society has a programme of research and development that underpins innovations in data collection methods. One of our current focuses is on using mobile applications to collect additional data that supplement data collected in annual interviews. To date, we have used mobile apps to collect data on consumer expenditure, well-being, anthropometrics and cognition. In this article we review the potential barriers to data collection using mobile apps and experimental evidence collected with the Understanding Society Innovation Panel, on what can be done to reduce these barriers.