Survey Data Collection Network (SDC-Net): The impact of Covid-19 on survey data collection methods in the social sciences

This is the final report of the Survey Data Collection Network (SDC-Net).

SDC-Net was a network of UK-based academic and non-academic partners including government departments, third sector and commercial research organisations, academics and major ESRC investments to share knowledge and collaborate in the area of survey data collection in social surveys as well as in setting the research agenda in the field. The network operated between December 2021 and April 2023.

The Principal Investigator was Olga Maslovskaya (University of Southampton) and the Co-Investigators are Gabriele Durrant (University of Southampton and NCRM), Lisa Calderwood (UCL), Gerry Nicolaas (NatCen) and Laura Wilson (ONS). The network activities were funded by the ESRC via the project “The impact of Covid-19 on survey data collection methods in the Social Sciences” as an additional funding stream of the ESRC-funded UK National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM).

The network included 107 members. The list of the organisations of the network members can be found in Appendix 1. Tim Hanson, who is the Head of ESS Questionnaire Design and Fieldwork in the European Social Survey (ESS), Ben Humberstone, who is the Head of Population Studies in Kantar Public, Sam Clemens, who is the Head of Probability Survey in Ipsos-Mori as well as Debrah Harding, who is the Managing Director of the Market Research Society (MRS), were project partners.

The ESRC recognised the importance of the activities of the previous network GenPopWeb2 which was also funded by the ESRC and the activities of SDC-Net were the continuation of the GenPopWeb2 with the wider scope addressing not only issues associated with online data collection in social surveys but the wider area of survey data collection in the UK.