Case Study: GESIS Panel achieves a free, fast, representative research panel for academics with QuestBack

The GESIS Panel enables the academic community to research the attitudes and thoughts of the general population

GESIS — the Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences and Germany’s largest social‑science infrastructure — needed a way to give researchers fast, simple access to demographically representative survey data. The challenge was to build a free, flexible panel that met rigorous academic, methodological and technical standards, was easy for scientists and participants to use, and ensured high data security and anonymity.

Working with Questback, GESIS launched a mixed‑mode panel on the Enterprise Feedback Suite combining online and postal surveys so results can be integrated and analyzed efficiently. Launched in 2014 with about 5,000 panelists (65% web, 35% mail), the panel has run dozens of studies (around 46 by mid‑2015), supports eight core annual surveys, shows low dropout (~2%), and has enabled faster, cheaper representative research with plans to expand across Europe.

GESIS Panel

Michael Bosnjak

Survey Operations Team Leader of the Survey Design and Methodology Department