Panel care in the Austrian EU-SILC Susanne Göttlinger Statistics Austria, Directorate Social Statistics

Fieldwork in Austria – Some facts Fieldwork period: February to June/July Min. effective sample size: 4.500 (cross-sectional) 3.250 (longitudinal) HHs Actual sample size: ~ 6.000 HHs net/year 4 waves, voluntary participation, First wave: CAPI; Follow up: CATI (if possible) Proxy rate ~ 10% Incentive 15€

Notification of the households Information material for communities as… … an information letter containing main facts about SILC …an article template for community newspapers An information letter for the chambers of labour Seperate letters for each wave Letters in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian or Turkish Letters for the households are supplemented with… … EU-SILC leaflet … „SILC newsletter“ … first wave: Booklet „Austria in Figures“ Motivation letters during fieldwork period

During the fieldwork period Measures to keep panel information up to date: First wave households are asked for… …the telephone number of persons 16+ years …the e-mail adress of persons 16+ years …if there are any changes in contact data planned Follow up households are asked … …if the whole household moved …if single persons moved out …if there are changes in the telehone numbers or e-mail addresses noted during the previous wave (or planned Follow up HHs without e-mail and telephone number are asked for the information again.

Panel care between waves How do we stay in touch with the households? Website and SILC-hotline: www.statistik.at/silcinfo SILC e-mail address: silc@statistik.gv.at HHs can contact us and provide information all over the year Christmas cards are sent via e-mail „Christmas letter“ is sent by mail to all of the follow up HHs

Christmas card and Chistmas letter Respondents are thanked for their participation and informed about the survey in the following year Households are asked if there were changes or if there are changes planned… … in the composition of the household … of the address … of telephone numbers They can also order… … which mode they prefer for the next wave … the booklet „Austria in Figures“ Do they plan to move  auch mit reinnehmen

E-mail for Christmas – Experiences Some figures: ~ 1/3 of follow up households in Austria provided an e-mail address Plausibility check was made before sending out the e-mails  ~ 15 addresses were corrected < 10% of those with e-mail address were undeliverable Some of the undeliverable cases could be corrected because there were obvious typing errors

E-mail for Christmas – Reactions Reactions of respondents: Consistently positiv reactions  no complaints at all about Statistics Austria sending e-mails Expected number of refusals  not more, not less Explicitly positiv reactions, for example… …Christmas greetings back to us …people stating, that they are looking forward to the next SILC wave Increasing number of e-mail responses (~ 1/3 more responses)

Which information do we get? Changes of the address of the whole household or single members Changes of contact information Changes of the composition of the household  Split-off households Preferences of the interview mode Deaths and births Refusals Returned letters because of deaths, adress changes… check with the population register

How is the gathered information used? The „Hotline“-database Tool to gather usefull information for first wave and follow up households Provided information is categorised Information can be filtered, sorted and updated before the next fieldwork period

Which information do the HHs provide? Distribution of contacts: ~38% by e-mail ~22% by post ~40% by call Types of changes: Moving of the whole household: ~12% Change of the telephone number: ~15% Prefered mode: ~22% Further changes noted: Moving of parts of the houshold New household members Death of a whole household as well as single members Typing errors, mistakes in birth dates…

Further Results: Example SILC 2017 2 – 3% split off households overall per year (~50% of these are successfully interviewed) 0.2% deaths of respondents 1.4% moved into an institutional home or out of country 11.5% of the households were questioned in a foreign language

Thank you for your attention! Susanne Göttlinger Statistics Austria, Directorate Social Statistics