High-Frequency Phone Panel Methodology
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.
Picture this
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.
What the evidence says
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.
- Who
- N = 3,052 young participants (aged 18–29) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
- How
- High-frequency fortnightly phone panel survey conducted over a 1-year period alongside face-to-face baseline and endline interviews.
What to do
Deploy bi-weekly short phone questionnaires alongside annual face-to-face surveys to track fine-grained behavioral responses to labor market policies.
From the source
"Fourth, we combine face-to-face survey data with a high-frequency phone questionnaire. This enables us to document the mechanisms through which job-seekers find better jobs and to analyse their immediate response to each intervention in a way that recall data would not permit."
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