5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Over the last decades, digital technologies have reshaped survey practices globally, although there is still inadequate internet access in many low-income countries. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift towards online methodologies, fundamentally transforming general population surveys. This session aims to explore these significant changes, focusing on new conditions of data collection.

Since the pandemic, we have observed the rise of online-access panels and longitudinal online-panel initiatives to monitor attitudinal changes over time. Major cross-national survey instruments have increasingly adopted the push-to-web mode, which leverages population registers or random sampling via mail or telephone to request online participation.

Our session should explore how surveys in different world regions have adapted in response to the pandemic and how current survey research aims for ongoing efforts to ensure unbiased data collection and high data quality in a rapidly changing environment. We especially welcome submissions focusing on:

• The Shift to Online Surveys: Examining the widespread adoption of web-based surveys and technological innovations, including mobile-friendly platforms and interactive features.
• Potential Representation Biases: Identifying sources of bias such as device effects, where differences in device types and internet access impact item and unit (non‑)response.
• Survey Design Adjustments: Strategies to enhance representation quality, including adaptive sampling techniques, oversampling underrepresented groups, and applying weighting adjustments to ensure representativeness.
• Ethical Considerations: Addressing heightened privacy concerns and the importance of maintaining public trust through transparent data practices and robust informed consent procedures, enhancing data protection and data integrity according to legal standards.