Using data from ELIPSS, the French probability based internet panel
Résumé
The ELIPSS Panel (Étude longitudinale par internet pour les sciences sociales) is one of the probability-based web panels across Europe. Panel members were randomly selected by the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE). Each of them is provided with a touchscreen tablet and a mobile Internet subscription. Thus, they can participate in monthly surveys even if they did not have internet access before. The ELIPSS panel now encompasses 3250 individuals aged between 18 and 79 and living in metropolitan France.
The surveys administered to the panel members are developed by research teams. Therefore, the covered topics depend on the projects submitted by researchers and selected by the scientific and technical board. During the pilot study (consisting in 1000 panel members), we conducted more than 40 surveys, longitudinal or cross-sectional, on various topics: cultural practices and lifestyles, political attitudes and behaviours, family relations, health problems, social stratification, environmental issues, residential strategies, geographical mobility over the lifecourse, attitudes and representations toward the State, eating behaviour and kitchen storage and organisation… We also conduct the ELIPSS annual survey to collect and update sociodemographics and to measure digital practices. Thanks to the panel management procedures we have developed, the response rate is usually upper than 80% while the attrition rate is moderate (less than 25% in 40 months).
After one-year embargo, data collected within the ELIPSS panel can be used by French and foreign researchers, PhD students, post-doctoral fellows and Master students to conduct secondary research. The datafiles of the ELIPSS panel are freely accessible for research or teaching purposes. All commercial use is prohibited. To access the ELIPSS standard files, researchers, teachers and students need to complete and sign a data use agreement. It is also possible to match data from several surveys to combine different topics that are rarely surveyed together. In this case, the data matching request is strictly monitored. The research project submitted in order to access the custom file has to set out the research questions and hypotheses, to list which variables seem necessary for the research and present how data will be statistically analysed. In addition, it could be reviewed by a legal expert if the request causes confidentiality issues or focuses on sensitive questions such as politics, religion, health...
The next step of the data dissemination is to give access to paradata which are collected during the survey completion by respondents. Besides the systematic collection of timestamps, specific projects lead us to gather other types of paradata such as the orientation of the tablet or the display of probing message when skipping questions.
This paper will present the research field, the sample, the survey design and the available data of a new French data source for social scientists.