Maximizing rates of consent to record linkage and additional data collection
All network activities in this fourth thematic area will focus on innovative methodological approaches for increasing rates of consent to record linkage and additional data collection activities (e.g., the collection of biomeasures), including the reduction of interviewer variability in obtained rates of consent, differential opinions towards data linkage by racial/ethnic groups, and possible confounding of non-consent to multiple data collection requests (e.g., administrative record linkage and collection of biosocial measures). Methodological innovations in this area will emphasize the reduction of respondent burden, innovative approaches for administering lengthy surveys with multiple types of data collection (e.g., survey and physical measurements), methods for emphasizing the benefits of record linkage, synthesizing prior literature on innovative approaches to obtaining consent, and explaining interviewer variance in consent rates with future training of interviewers in mind.
Bibliography
Crossley, T. F. (2024).
Using paradata to help understand consent to record linkage
Anton van Erkel, P.F., Hopmann, D.N., Skovsgaard, M., and Terren, L. (2024).
The Role of Consent Form Design Under GDPR: A Survey Experiment
International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Volume 36, Issue 1, Spring 2024, edad047,. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edad047.
Summary
This experimental study of alternative approaches to obtaining informed consent in the GDPR context of the European Union documents the advantages, for survey response rates, of using condensed information and in-text legal references (as opposed to a hyperlink).
Burton J., Couper, M. P., and Jäckle, A. (2024).
The Effects of Placement and Order on Consent to Data Linkage in a Web survey
Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology 2024, smae004. https://doi.org/10.1093/jssam/smae004.
Summary
We report on an experiment in a supplemental web survey as part of a longitudinal study in the United Kingdom where we ask survey respondents to consent to two forms of data linkage to health records and to consent to be mailed a serology kit. We varied the placement (early, early in context, or late in the survey) and order (linkage first or serology first) of the consent requests. We also examine reasons for consent or non-consent. We find that order of the requests does not make much difference, but making the requests early in the survey significantly increases consent rates over asking them after a series of content-related questions (by 3.4 percentage points) or later in the survey (by 7.2 percentage points). This is consistent with previous research showing that early requests for consent in a survey have a positive effect. The main reason chosen for not consenting related to the personal nature of the information requested.
Imke Herold, I., Pettinichi, Y., and Bethmann, A. (2024).
Comparative Analyses of Consent Rates in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).
Paper presented at the 2024 Comparative Survey Design and Implementation Workshop, Berlin, Germany.
Summary
This presentation provides an overview of an NIMLAS pilot study that aims to examine consent patterns from multi-national, multi-lingual, multi-cultural contexts of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).
Keusch, F., Pankowska P.K., Cernat, A., and Bach, R. L. (2024).
Do You Have Two Minutes to Talk about Your Data? Willingness to Participate and Nonparticipation Bias in Facebook Data Donation.
Sage Journals, Volume 36, Issue 4, January 2024. https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822X231225907
Summary
Data donation is a novel approach to collecting digital trace data, where users are asked to download their retrospective data from a platform and share them with the researchers. Little is known about the willingness to donate data and the potential bias that may arise from nonparticipation. We conducted a study among over 900 German Facebook users asking them to donate two data packages. While around 80% of participants were willing to donate their data, only around one-third of them successfully did so. Trust in researchers positively correlates with willingness and donation success, and trust in Facebook is negatively associated with donation success. The framing of the data donation request did not affect the outcomes. We find no difference in frequency of Facebook use between donors and non-donors.
Al Baghal, T. (2023).
Linking survey and social media data: Experiences and Evidence.
Presentation to the University of Michigan Survey Research Center, December 2023.
Summary
We report on an experiment in a supplemental web survey as part of a longitudinal study in the United Kingdom where we ask survey respondents to consent to two forms of data linkage to health records and to consent to be mailed a serology kit. We varied the placement (early, early in context, or late in the survey) and order (linkage first or serology first) of the consent requests. We also examine reasons for consent or non-consent. We find that order of the requests does not make much difference, but making the requests early in the survey significantly increases consent rates over asking them after a series of content-related questions (by 3.4 percentage points) or later in the survey (by 7.2 percentage points). This is consistent with previous research showing that early requests for consent in a survey have a positive effect. The main reason chosen for not consenting related to the personal nature of the information requested.
Jäckle, A., Burton, J., Couper, M. P., Crossley, T. F., and Walzenbach, S. (2023).
Survey Consent to Administrative Data Linkage: Five Experiments on Wording and Format.
Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology, smad019. https://doi.org/10.1093/jssam/smad019.
Summary
This study aimed to understand how different aspects of consent request design in surveys can impact informed consent rates for linking survey data to administrative records. In order to do this, a series of experiments including factors such as readability, placement, default options, additional information, and trust priming were varied. The findings suggest that asking for consent early in the survey and priming respondents to consider their trust in the data holder can increase consent rates without compromising understanding, while factors like default wording and offering additional information did not significantly impact consent rates.
Struminskaya, B., Sakshaug, J. W. (2023)
Ethical Considerations for Augmenting Surveys with Auxiliary Data Sources.
Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 87, Issue S1, 2023, Pages 619–633, 12 July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfad030.
Summary
Survey researchers frequently use supplementary data sources, such as paradata, administrative data, and contextual data to augment surveys and enhance substantive and methodological research capabilities. While these data sources can be beneficial, integrating them with surveys can give rise to ethical and data privacy issues that have not been completely resolved. In this research synthesis, we review ethical considerations and empirical evidence on how privacy concerns impact participation in studies that collect these novel data sources to supplement surveys. We further discuss potential approaches for safeguarding participants’ data privacy during data collection and dissemination that may assuage their concerns. Finally, we conclude with open questions and suggested avenues for future research.
Walzenbach, S., Burton J., Couper M.P., Crossley T.F., and Jäckle A. (2023).
Experiments on Multiple Requests for Consent to Data Linkage in Surveys.
Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology, Volume 11, Issue 3, June 2023, Pages 518–540, https://doi.org/10.1093/jssam/smab053.
Summary
In a context of multiple requests for linking different administrative records, the formatting of the multiple requests (all at once, one per page, one statement for all requests) does not matter, but the order can matter! Less sensitive requests first, more sensitive requests later. This work has primarily focused on admin data linkages; more work is needed on physical measures, biological measures, etc.
Wenz, A., and Keusch, F. (2023).
Guided by the Technology Acceptance Model, we varied study characteristics in a vignette experiment to examine their effect on individuals’ willingness to download a research app on their smartphone.
Public Opinion Quarterly, nfad019. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfad019.
Summary
This study explored factors influencing individuals’ willingness to participate in smartphone-based data collection methods. Findings indicate that participants are more likely to engage when they have control over data collection, can review data before submission, receive invitations via postal letters instead of phone calls, and are offered unconditional incentives rather than conditional ones.
Beuthner, C., Keusch, F., Silber, H., Weiß, B., and Schröder, J. (2022).
Consent to data linkage for different data domains – The role of question order, question wording, and incentives.
SocArXiv. 10.31235/osf.io/qh93g.
Summary
Collecting additional data from a variety of sources can help to enrich survey data. Regardless of the source, consent must be provided in order to collect this additional information. When comparing administrative data, smartphone usage data, bank data, biomarkers, Facebook data, health insurance data, and sensor data, survey respondents were most likely to consent to sharing their Facebook, smartphone usage, and biomarkers, whereas they are more reluctant to share bank data.
- Understanding and improving data linkage consent in surveys project at the University of Essex, UK
- Couper, M.P., and Ofstedal, M.B. (2022). Consistency of Consent between Domains. Panel Survey Methods Workshop
Jäckle, A., Burton, J., Couper, M.P., Crossley, T.F., and Walzenbach, S. (2022).
How and Why Does the Mode of Data Collection Affect Consent to Data Linkage?
Survey Research Methods, 16(3), 387–408. https://doi.org/10.18148/srm/2022.v16i3.7933.
Summary
We use experimental mixed-mode data from a probability survey in Great Britain to examine why respondents are less likely to consent to data linkage in online than face-to-face interviews. We find that the 30 percentage point difference in consent rates is a causal effect of the mode on willingness to consent; it is not due to selection of different types of respondents into web and face-to-face interviews. We find that respondents are less likely to understand the data linkage request, less likely to process the consent request thoroughly, and more likely to be concerned about privacy and data security when answering online rather than in a face-to-face interview. Using digital audio-recordings of the face-to-face interviews, we find that verbal behaviours of interviewers do not explain the mode effects: respondents only rarely ask questions or express concern, and interviewers only rarely offer additional information about the data linkage. We also examine which devices respondents used to complete the web survey and find that these do not explain the mode effects either. Finally, we test the effects of simplifying the consent request, by reducing the reading difficulty: while the easier wording increases understanding of the request, it does not increase consent in either mode.
Mneimneh, Z. (2022).
Evaluation of consent to link Twitter data to survey data.
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society), 185(S2). doi:10.1111/rssa.12949.
Summary
Data from social media platforms such as Twitter can be very useful when it is linked to survey data, as it provides a vast amount of information on the thoughts and opinions on various topics of those who utilize these platforms, and do so in almost real-time. Due to privacy requirements, additional consent from respondents is needed in order to link their Twitter data with survey data. This study found that consent rates are higher if the request is placed at the beginning rather than the end of the interview or survey. Additionally, there are many additional individual-level factors that impact consent to data linkage.
Silber, H., Gerdon, F., Bach, R., Kern, C., Keusch, F., and Kreuter, F. (2022).
A preregistered vignette experiment on determinants of health data sharing behavior: Willingness to donate sensor data, medical records, and biomarkers.
Politics and the Life Sciences. Published online before print September 15, 2022. 10.1017/pls.2022.15.
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of high-quality health research and data for use in political decision-making surrounding population health issues. Therefore, it is important to understand factors such as social trust, privacy concerns, technical affinity, altruism, age, and device ownership, as they either encourage or deter people from sharing their health data.
Burton, J., Couper, M.P., Crossley, T.F., Jäckle, A., and Walzenbach, S. (2021).
How do Survey Respondents Decide Whether to Consent to Data linkage?
Understanding Society Working Paper 2021-05, Colchester: University of Essex. [revised version under review]
Summary
Survey data are increasingly being linked to administrative records to maximize the value of the data for social and health research while minimizing respondent burden. Obtaining explicit consent for such linkage from survey respondents and ensuring that such consent is informed are important for ethical and legal reasons. While a growing body of research has examined the correlates of consent to record linkage and explored ways to increase consent rates, we still know very little about how people make a decision to consent to record linkage or not. In this paper we use experimental data collected in five different surveys – including face-to-face and online surveys from the Understanding Society Innovation panel and three different online surveys administered to members of an opt-in access panel – to explore the process of consent decision-making.
A key finding is that respondents report using a variety of different decision processes, some of which are more “reflective” (for example, considering the consequences of consent or their trust in the organisations involved) while others suggest the use of less or different information (for example, based on “gut-feeling”). Importantly, across all samples, less than 40% of respondents report using a reflective decision process exclusively. These self-reported processes are corroborated by markers of effort: those who report a more reflective processing of the request take longer to respond, are more likely to read additional information about the linkage and are more likely to self-report higher levels of effort in answering the question. Reported decision processes align with the nature and quantity of information respondents report drawing on in making the decision. We find that the self-reported decision process is weakly predicted by background characteristics and not affected by several survey design manipulations.
Finally, we find that self-reported decision processes are associated with consent outcomes. More reflective decision processes are associated with higher consent, greater comprehension and greater confidence in the decision. Conversely, decisions described as “gut” or habitual are associated with lower consent and lower comprehension.
These findings have important implications for practice. Many attempts to achieve higher consent rates and more informed consent involve the provision of additional information, but these have had limited success. Our analyses point to a possible explanation: if many of those who withhold consent are using a very rapid and less reflective decision process, additional information is unlikely to be incorporated into their decision. Instead, our results suggest that a fruitful strategy for promoting informed consent may be to try to shift respondents towards more reflective decision processes, whether that be a “consequential” decision process that weighs the pros and cons of the decision, or one based on trust in the relevant organisations. Our results indicate that this could have a double benefit: in our data, those employing the more reflective decision processes are both more likely to consent and have greater understanding of the request. That is, they are more likely to give informed consent.
Jäckle, A., Beninger, K., Burton, J. and Couper, M.P. (2021).
Understanding Data Linkage Consent in Longitudinal Surveys.
In Advances in Longitudinal Survey Methodology, P. Lynn (Ed.). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119376965.ch6.
Summary
Linking data from longitudinal surveys to administrative records (whether held by government or private entities) is an increasingly attractive option for several reasons. As longitudinal surveys continue to respond to pressures to increase efficiency, and as new survey modes are developed, the use of mixed-mode data collection is increasing. Much of the work on informed consent for administrative data linkages has focused on exploring correlates of consent at both the respondent and interviewer level and examining non-consent bias. In this chapter, the authors focus on understanding the process by which respondents decide whether to give consent. They use both quantitative analyses of existing data from Understanding Society and qualitative work to explore the consent process. The quantitative analyses document the extent to which respondents make consistent decisions, and the extent to which the mode of data collection affects this decision, by addressing some research questions.
Keusch, F., Leonard, M.M., Sajons, C., and Steiner, S. (2021).
Using smartphone technology for research on refugees – Evidence from Germany.
Sociological Methods & Research, 50, 1863-1894. 10.1177/0049124119852377.
Summary
Surveying transient and other hard-to-reach populations can be especially difficult. In an effort to increase data collection in a group of refugees, a mobile app was offered after an interview in an attempt to collect additional passive data. Unfortunately, many refugees did not install the app, and low literacy rates are highly correlated with app nonparticipation. On the contrary, introducing an incentive was shown to significantly increase participation in the passive data collection efforts.
Silber, H., Breuer, J., Beuthner, C., Gummer, T., Keusch, F., Siegers, P., Stier, S., and Weiß, B. (2021).
Linking surveys and digital trace data: Insights from two studies on determinants of data sharing behavior.
SocArXiv. 10.31235/osf.io/dz93u.
Summary
Combining survey and digital trace data from sources such as Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, and smartphone health applications can enhance the richness and quality of the overall data. Using incentives is shown to increase the likelihood of a participant agreeing to share digital trace data.
Sakshaug, J.W., Hülle, S., Schmucker, A., and Liebig, S. (2020).
Panel survey recruitment with or without interviewers? Implications for nonresponse, panel consent, and total recruitment bias.
Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology, 8(3), 540-565.
Summary
Interviewers can have very strong effects on record linkage consent rates (and potentially consent bias), and additional studies of explanations for these effects are needed.
Keusch, F., Struminskaya, B., Antoun, C., Couper, M.P., and Kreuter, F. (2019).
Willingness to participate in passive mobile data collection.
Public Opinion Quarterly, 83, 210-235. 10.1093/poq/nfz007.
Summary
The increase in smartphone usage and improvement in related technologies provides researchers with a unique opportunity to collect data from users through passive data collection with smartphone applications. Participant’s willingness to participate in passive mobile data collection is often contingent upon the following: the incentive promised for study participation, sponsor of the research, length of data collection period, option to opt out at any time, and ensuring participants privacy will be maintained.
Sakshaug, J.W., Hülle, S., Schmucker, A., and Liebig, S. (2017, August).
Exploring the effects of interviewer-and self-administered survey modes on record linkage consent rates and bias.
In Survey Research Methods (Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 171-188).
Sakshaug, J., Tutz, V., and Kreuter, F. (2013, June).
Placement, wording, and interviewers: Identifying correlates of consent to link survey and administrative data.
In Survey Research Methods (Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 133-144).
Summary
In a telephone setting, better to place linkage consent requests at the beginning of the survey; cognitive load gets higher as the survey goes on, so it is important to ask earlier. Interviewer effects can also be quite strong on consent requests, and can depend on interviewer attitudes to linkage consent. Interviewers who themselves would consent tend to have higher consent rates.