RUSSET Data Collection

16 september 2005

DATA COLLECTION

The interviews

The fieldwork has been done by the Institute for Comparative Social Research (CESSI), a independent Russian public opinion and market research organization. Interviewers were selected from local organizations. It is known that in the former Soviet Union interviewers delivered the questionnaire at home to collect it a few days later. However, for this study the interviews were administered face-to-face at the respondents home. In order to minimize cheating of any kind and to get the clear insight in the process CESSI required the interviewers to write elaborate reports of the process and the interdiction of substitution of one household by another. About 110 interviewers participated in each wave of the survey, about 30% of interviewers was changed in each wave.

Timing of the interviews

The interviews were originally planned for the late spring and early summer months. However due to organizational difficulties the interviewing in wave 4 could not start in time. This resulted in a delay of more than half a year, hence the interviews were completed in the late winter period.

Wave 5 was the first interview for the fresh sample, and in wave 5 the ‘old’ sample from 1993 was not interviewed. Wave 5 was planned right after wave 4. But wave 6 was planned for the summer months. It was decided that both interviewing rounds should not interfere, and the sample of 1993 should not be interviewed so soon after wave 4. Hence,  it was decided to shift the timing of the interviewing to the autumn and winter months. Note that this shift is interesting for it might have an effect on satisfaction and happiness issues in the study.

Table 1: Timing of the interviews 

Skipping of an interview

In this study it was decided that a respondent could skip an interview, in order to minimize response burden and panel drop out. This decision was up to the respondent, and could be requested for after the completion of the current interview for the next year, or just before the beginning of the current interview.

No contact decision

A respondent was not contacted anymore after three waves of no-contact, unless it was established that the respondent either was not able to answer the questions (disease, moved without prior notice, etc.) or that the respondent was not willing to participate anymore. A no-contact for a specific interview required the interviewer to visit the respondents address 6 times without being able to contact the respondent, or when the respondent made clear that he did not want to participate this year/anymore.