Kristen Olson

At least no one in a web+mail survey wants to talk with an interviewer! :)

Happy to share the paper with anyone who is interested in it.

ANES Data Release! electionstudies.org/data-center/...

The 3-wave ANES panel is now available. It merges data from 3 election studies (2016-2020-2024), the first time the ANES has collected interviews of the same respondents across 3 presidential elections.

“ChatBot” is a Two Syllable Word...Or Is It?: Using Generative AI for Survey Question Readability Assessments - Kristen Olson, Trent D. Buskirk, 2025 Market and survey researchers aim to write survey questions so that the target population can understand them. A common recommendation for general population st...

New article! About a year ago, I asked ChatGPT 3.5 to calculate the reading level of survey questions. It was totally wrong. And this paper was born! Trent Buskirk and I examine multiple ChatGPT and Claude models for evaluating question reading levels & inputs.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Will One More Dollar Help? The Effect of Sequential Incentives on Survey Participation and Costs in a Concurrent Mixed-mode Survey - Kristen Olson, Amanda Ganshert, Mia Bourek, 2025 Prepaid monetary incentives increase response rates in surveys. Whether offering a second monetary incentive to nonrespondents in web-and-mail surveys increases...

New paper alert! We examine the effectiveness of sending a follow-up incentive to nonrespondents after an initial prepaid incentive (a sequential incentive). Response rates increased with higher seq incentives, but costs skyrocketed with $5 vs. $1 or $2.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

2026 Survey Costs Workshop - AAPOR

Survey costs drive almost every data collection decision, but are woefully understudied. @aapor.bsky.social, @amstatnews.bsky.social, and @westatofficial.bsky.social are cosponsoring this important workshop on Survey Costs in February 2026! Submit your abstract today!

aapor.org/aapor-2026-s...

2026 Survey Costs Workshop - AAPOR

Survey costs drive almost every data collection decision, but are woefully understudied. @aapor.bsky.social, @amstatnews.bsky.social, and @westatofficial.bsky.social are cosponsoring this important workshop on Survey Costs in February 2026! Submit your abstract today!

aapor.org/aapor-2026-s...

Yes, that's a great example. Thanks! And contemporary.

Yes, it's a great example! But I'm also interested in other examples of social science (or health) research ethical problems or issues or questions that don't make the "classic" examples list....

I'm teaching a research ethics class for upper division undergraduates this semester. Looking for case study examples of ethical issues that aren't the BIG ones (e.g., Tuskegee, Milgram, Zimbardo) in a digestible form for undergrads (news articles, podcasts, videos, shorter articles).

It was an honor to speak in this memorial session for Don Dillman at #JSM25. Don's influences on the science of surveys are extraordinary. But the primary words that people use to describe him at his memorial are kind, generous, honest, humble, and welcoming - I think he did something extra right.

@olsonkm.bsky.social kicks off our session celebrating Don Dillman at #JSM2025 with a discussion of Don’s contributions to survey methodology. Thanks to @statstas.datascience.blue for setting this up! 💯

It has been the honor of my life to serve as Commissioner of BLS alongside the many dedicated civil servants tasked with measuring a vast and dynamic economy. It is vital and important work and I thank them for their service to this nation.

Me (Kristen Olson) standing in front of my title slide that says "From Mail Surveys to Chatbots: Changes in Survey Modes, Methods, and Data Sources Over Time" at the keynote address at the European Survey Research Association conference in Utrecht

I was honored to be the keynote speaker at the #ESRA25 @esrasurvey.bsky.social conference last week in Utrecht. A fantastic conference all around, with great talks on data collection methods, AI, data donation, questionnaire design, and much more.

Good news! Release 1 of the 2024 GSS is available for download.

The 2024 GSS, like 2022, uses web, in-person, and phone modes. For some variables this can complicate analyses of trends. See documentation.

Still a prob sample & gold standard survey w/ high resp rates (by contemporary standards).

In an experiment, Pew Research Center demonstrated that opt-in and probability-based surveys produced very different results about young adults' views of the Holocaust and abortion.

If you encounter what seems like an implausible survey finding, ask:
1. Were survey respondents selected randomly or was this an opt-in poll?
2. Could the results, especially for young adults, be driven by bogus respondents?

Keep this post in mind: www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

everything about this is simultaneously absolutely wrong and absolutely perfect

I give comments to my students of “what’s the denominator?” all the time!This level of precision matters not only for understanding the group about whom one is making inference, but also to suggest whether it’s the whole set of respondents or a subset of them (and all the errors therein).

🚨 Call for all AAPOR board gamers! 🚨
GAMEPOR is finally officially on the conference schedule, now named "Longitudinal Leisure Study (with board games)".
Bring your favorite (and luggage friendly) board games to the conference and come join us for an epic game night! 🎲
#AAPOR @aapor.bsky.social

Looking forward to the #AAPOR25 conference next week!

I will be giving papers on visible incentives in mixed-mode surveys, mode preferences in today’s survey landscape, and using generative AI for reading level calculations of survey questions.

Hey data nerds, ANES 2024 Combined Pre- and Post-Election preliminary data is out now! Have fun! 🤓

We are thrilled that the amazing @olsonkm.bsky.social will give a keynote at #ESRA25! Title: "From Mail Surveys to Chatbots: Changes in Survey Modes, Methods, and Data Sources Over Time"! Register now for #ESRA25 & be part of the future of survey research!

This article is a great example for a questionnaire design class!

*area ….

We have a paper in this Special Issue of @surveypractice.bsky.social! Spanish translation of self-administered surveys in a rural are with higher concentrations of Spanish speakers yielded very few Spanish language completes, but they came from addresses w/a Hispanic surname indicator on ABS frame.

Here are a few studies I've published using data from Dept. of Educ / IES. None were funded by DoE/IES.

Most are with Steve Morgan (often lead), Dafna Gelbgiser, and undergrad or grad students, some of whom went on to work for Dept. of Education.

1st Sue's 🧵, the inspiration for this one.

Thread of my own work that has used data from Department of Education and columns that have focused on research funded by them

1/N Inequality in college graduation rates
Uses data from Education Longitudinal Study, conducted by Department of Education
www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/u...

Over 1,000 submission to Social Science Computer Review in 2024! That's incredible. Please send us your best work! 📝 Follow this account to see the amazing work that we have published. 🏆

FANTASTIC

ICPSR at U Mich is coordinating the archiving of at-risk federal data (all of it?)

You can upload data you have & search for data you don’t have

www.datalumos.org/datalumos/

The American National Election Study is an NSF funded publicly available, incredibly rich dataset that tracks American public opinion, vote choice and evaluations of government that has been in the field since 1948. It is an incredible resource for teaching and research and must be protected.

Inexplicable Cuts at the Dept. of Education Recently, DOGE has bragged about terminating 89 contracts worth a collective $881 million at the Institute for Education Sciences at the US Department of Education.

I do think we should have discussions about how to do education research that is cost effective, but the implicit suggestion that the ED activities are wasteful/fraud is just wrong. Read on if you want concrete examples.

Inexplicable Cuts at the Dept. of Education open.substack.com/pub/goodscie...