*apologies for cross-posting*

Call for Submissions:

Special Issue of Public Opinion Quarterly

Augmenting Surveys with Paradata,

Administrative Data, and Contextual Data

Guest Editors: Joseph W. Sakshaug and Bella Struminskaya

Augmenting traditional survey data with other data sources can enable researchers to better describe society, test hypotheses, and assess research methods. Three of the main data sources that can enhance surveys are paradata, administrative data, and contextual data.

Paradata refers to process data that is collected during survey fieldwork but is not the direct result of respondents chosen answers to survey questions. This includes timestamp data (response latency), call record data, interviewer observations (e.g., of the built environment, assessments of the respondents’ interest), etc.

Administrative data refers to the linking of externally created data to individual respondent records by matching on personal information (often with the consent of the respondent). Social surveys may link to tax, insurance or other government data sets, health surveys can link to insurance claim data, political surveys can link to state voter registration records, etc.

Contextual data are external sources of information that measure aspects of the respondent’s physical, social or information environment. This can include aggregate data on the demographic composition of a respondent’s neighborhood or organizational characteristics of respondents’ place of employment or place of worship. It can also include data about respondents’ behavior and environment from wearables, sensors, apps, and digital traces from social media or web browsing.

This special issue of POQ will highlight innovative and important scholarship using one or more of these survey enhancements. We welcome papers that use augmented data to answer important substantive questions, papers that address ethical considerations, and papers that focus on methodological challenges faced by producers and users of such data.

Submissions to the special issue are welcomed between November 1st, 2021 and March 15th, 2022. Manuscripts will be peer-reviewed in accordance with standard journal practice and will be published online soon after acceptance. The issue is scheduled for publication in early 2023.

Manuscripts should be uploaded at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/poq, following the manuscript preparation instructions provided on the journal’s website. To ensure consideration in the special issue, authors must include a cover letter that clearly states that the manuscript has been submitted for consideration for the 2023 special issue on “Augmenting Surveys with Paradata, Administrative Data, and Contextual Data.” Queries about this special issue should be directed to Joe Sakshaug (joesaks@umich.edumailto:joesaks@umich.edu) or Bella Struminskaya (b.struminskaya@uu.nlmailto:b.struminskaya@uu.nl).

Bella Struminskaya | Assistant professor

Department of Methodology and Statistics | Utrecht University Postal address: PO Box 80140 | 3508 TC Utrecht | The Netherlands

Visiting address: Sjoerd Groenman building, room C116 | Padualaan 14 | Utrecht