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A major objective for longitudinal studies is retaining participants over time. The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) is the largest on-going nationally representative study of young people in the UK (N = 18,818). Seven waves of data collection took place face-to-face between 2001 (age 9 months) and 2019 (age 17), with no monetary incentives offered. Throughout 2020 to 2021, participants were invited to take part in three web surveys focused on understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the third web survey, conditional monetary incentives were introduced in the form of a randomised experiment. Three quarters of the issued sample were offered a £10 voucher to complete the survey and the remaining proportion were offered no incentive as usual. Regression analyses were conducted to examine the effect of the incentive on response rates and various aspects of data quality. The incentive boosted the response rate by 7 percentage points, from a baseline of 24%, with a stronger effect observed in those who had taken part in the most recent major wave. Regarding data quality, the incentivised group showed lower break-off rates and spent more time completing the survey. Therefore, the incentive had a significant positive effect on response rates and some aspects of data quality. Future research should evaluate the effect of incentives in relation to other modes of data collection and consider alternative strategies to improve response rates for previous non-respondents, who are considered harder to reach.

This article investigates how mail-based online panel recruitment can be facilitated through incentives. The analysis relies on two incentive experiments and their effects on panel recruitment, and the intermediate participation in the recruitment survey. The experiments were implemented in the context of the German Emigration and Remigration Panel Study and encompass two samples of randomly sampled persons. Tested incentives include a conditional lottery, conditional monetary incentives, and the combination of unconditional money-in-hand with conditional monetary incentives. For an encompassing evaluation of the link between incentives and panel recruitment, the article further assesses the incentives' implications for demographic composition and panel recruitment unit costs. Multivariate analysis indicates that low combined incentives (€5/€5) or, where unconditional disbursement is unfeasible, high conditional incentives (€20) are most effective in enhancing panel participation. In terms of demographic bias, low combined incentives (€5/€5) and €10 conditional incentives are the favored options. The budget options from the perspective of panel recruitment include the lottery and the €10 conditional incentive which break-even at net sample sizes of 1000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In wave 6 of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) adult starting cohort, an incentive experiment was conducted that randomly switched respondent cash incentives from promised to (partly) prepaid for half of the eligible sample. This research note examines the effects that this change in incentive scheme had on response rates, on sample composition in terms of some key survey variables, and fieldwork efforts by interviewers. We find moderately sized positive effects on overall response rates. The switch in incentive scheme appears to be particularly effective in raising response rates of low educated individuals and those with low reading and mathematics competencies, subgroups that participated underproportionately in prior waves. This differential reaction to the changed incentive scheme therefore leads to a somewhat more balanced sample composition along these dimensions. In line with prior studies, effects on fieldwork efforts such as the number of contact attempts to obtain an interview could be found, but are small in magnitude.