ELIPSS : A practice driven application development

ELIPSS (Étude Longitudinale par Internet Pour les Sciences Sociales) is a probability based Internet panel, dedicated to social sciences, inspired by the dutch LISS Panel.
The pilot study is running since 2012, consists of 1000 panel members and since 2016, 2500 new panel members were recruited for a total of 3500 panelists.


The target population represents all individuals living in private households in metropolitan France, aged 18-79 at the entry in the panel, having sufficient command of the French language to answer self-administered questionnaires. Each panelist is equipped free of charge with a tablet connected to the Internet.
ELIPSS surveys are given each month and should not exceed 30 minutes. Surveys deal with various topics such as health, environment, politics, etc. They are designed by researchers after a selection by a dedicated scientific committee.
One of our key point is to maintain regular participation to the surveys. Over the years, the ELIPSS team has set up an array of panel managements tools that have made possible to handle more than three thousand panelists and their tablets with three panel managers only.

The panel maintenance relies on an intranet inspired by the LISS Panel, the Panel Management System, and tailor-made by the IT team in close collaboration with our panel management team. How does this tool developed in house allow a personalized follow-up of more than three thousand panelists?

Thanks to the pilot study, we were able to formalize our specific management processes and communication strategies to develop specific tools. One of these tools is the ‘identity card’ which summarizes all necessary information to follow-up a panelist. Four types of information are gathered to allow a quick profile analysis :
- contact data (name, first name of the person and contact details)
- response profile (response rate and follow-up letters sent)
- incidents data (closed and open ticket)
- tablet and phone line data (inventory reference and status).
Detailed information is available for each data category and allows a precise management when needed.
A daily script checks the answer to the survey of panelists and adds them in different “groups”. Each group will be applied a specific communication process : for example one group will only receive phone calls to motivate them to answer whereas another one will receive letters.

These efforts to maintain the panel are positive: thanks to these, the response rates are around 80% each month and the attrition rate is moderate (less than 25% after 40 months)..
We are constantly trying to develop new features to make our survey management more efficient and easy. For instance, in the near future, we will deploy android notifications for tablets as well as an automatic survey recall system to be able to follow more precisely the panelists.
This presentation will give an overview of the different monitoring strategies and the tools we have developed to support the panel management activities. We will discuss the new features that could be set up to improve our processes.