High-Frequency Phone Panel Methodology

In Simple Words

Imagine tracking a runner's training progress by taking a snapshot once every four years versus checking their stopwatch every two weeks—frequent check-ins reveal weekly fluctuations, temporary bursts of effort, and immediate obstacles that a multi-year gap completely misses.

Research question

Infrequent longitudinal surveys rely on long recall periods that introduce recall bias and obscure short-term dynamic behavioral adjustments in response to active labor market interventions.

Participants

N = 3,052 young participants (aged 18–29) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Study Design

High-frequency fortnightly phone panel survey conducted over a 1-year period alongside face-to-face baseline and endline interviews.

Results

Fortnightly phone surveys maintained low monthly attrition rates (ranging between 2% and 6%) and reliably captured short-run fortnightly spikes in search intensity (+12.5% during transport subsidy weeks) without generating Hawthorne measurement effects.

Takeaway

Deploy bi-weekly short phone questionnaires alongside annual face-to-face surveys to track fine-grained behavioral responses to labor market policies.

Read alongside the research

Plain-English glossary

Original explanations, informed by the references below. Examples are illustrations, not data from the studies above. The research text stays unchanged.

Longitudinal study

A study that checks the same group of people at different times. This lets researchers examine how things change over time.

ExampleResearchers ask the same workers about their wellbeing at the start, after three months and after six months.

NICE · Longitudinal study ↗Read more about longitudinal study →

Baseline

The starting measurements in a study. Researchers use these to compare what participants were like at the start with what happens later.

ExampleBefore a training programme starts, researchers measure workers’ earnings. That first measurement is the baseline.

GET-IT glossary · Baseline characteristics ↗Read more about baseline →

Related findings

• Anticipatory Human Capital and Child Nutrition Investment →Development

  Imagine planting two types of fruit trees in a garden where fruit tree A sells for high prices in the future market while tree B sells for nothing. Gardeners naturally water, fertilize, and prune tree A far more diligently long before it bears fruit because they anticipate harvesting a lucrative crop years down the road.

• Asset Accumulation and Savings Persistence →Development

  Think of a short-term public works program like a heavy rainstorm over a dry farm. If a farmer lets the water run off, the soil dries up as soon as the storm ends.

• Asset Wealth and Cash Liquidity Decoupling →Development

  Imagine a rancher who owns ten valuable oxen but has no paper cash in their wallet. Even though they are wealthy on paper, they purchase smaller quantities of commercial seed because selling a working ox to buy a bag of seed is impractical.

• Baseline Investment Intention Realization in Microenterprises →Development

  Imagine telling a friend that if you get $100, you will buy a specific power drill for your workshop. When given the $100, you immediately go out and buy that exact drill.