MRI: Development of a Computer Network for Experimental and Non-Experimental Data Collection via the Internet from a Nationally Representative Sample of American Households

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For many decades, numerous important decisions made by governments and businesses around the United States have been informed by data collected through representative sample surveys of Americans. Billions of US dollars are spent every year so that one can learn the nation's unemployment rate, its inflation rate, and much more about the experiences of Americans that govern policy-making, cost-effectively and quickly through surveys. In recent years, there has also been a sharp increase in the use of survey data by academic researchers to enhance theory development in a wide range of important domains, providing insights into the nature of contemporary social life, the workings of the human mind, and approaches to solving pressing national problems. At the same time, the nation has experienced a sharp increase in the costs of conducting high-quality surveys, coupled with a decline in the response rates of such surveys. The U.S. federal, state, and local governments, the private sector, and the academy therefore need quick innovation in survey methodology to permit cost-effective collection of accurate data from highly representative samples in the future.This project will take an unprecedented step to test a new methodology to achieve this goal. If this trial works, the methodology will be available for use by all organizations around the country that are committed to making informed policy-making decisions. The tool to be built will bring a new standard of accuracy to data, provide broad accessibility to social scientists at reduced cost, and blend the analytic power afforded by a state-of-the art computer network laboratory with the generalization power afforded by a representative sample survey of American households. Specifically, the project will purchase computer hardware, install the hardware in a representative sample of 1,000 households across the country, and calibrate the national network of computers via the Internet, testing to assure that it works properly to permit social science survey data collection. The network will enable path-breaking research that could not be achieved by any methodology currently in use and would considerably increase the value of the data collected, analyzed, and reported.Sampling statisticians will draw a representative sample of American households using an innovative method based upon U.S. postal service mailing address lists. Then, installation specialists will visit the selected households, randomly select an adult household member, conduct a brief interview face-to-face (with an expected response rate of about 80%), and then offer him or her a free laptop computer and free high-speed Internet connection in exchange for using the equipment to provide data once a month via the Internet. The installation specialists will install the computers, walk respondents through the process of using them, and calibrate the equipment on site to work properly. Then, once a month, respondents will provide a new round of data by accessing a secure webpage, and calibration of the computer network will be conducted. The opportunity to collect data on this platform will be made available to government agencies, businesses, and academic scholars. A range of different evaluations of the network will be performed to assess its effectiveness. If this effort is successful, it will provide scientific and practical justification for the implementation of this approach to experimental and non-experimental survey data collection on a much larger scale, which will enable academic researchers, federal, state, and local government agencies, and private commercial and non-commercial organizations to conduct the highest quality research at a practical price.