The contribution of paradata to panel cooperation in SHARE

This paper deals with panel cooperation in a cross-national face-to-face survey, the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Our outcome of interest is panel cooperation in the fourth wave, conditional on participating in the previous wave. We focus on the contribution of paradata, related to fieldwork strategies, features of the (current) interviewer and variables describing respondents’ prior interview experience. Using a multilevel approach, we find that factors at all three levels (survey agency, interviewer and respondent) influence cooperation. At the highest level, we highlight the importance of everyday communication between survey agency coordinators and interviewers to gain cooperation. At the interviewer level we find that interviewers’ quality of work and experience significantly affect cooperation propensity. Respondent-level characteristics represented in paradata, such as prior interview experience, have a large influence on the cooperation decision overall.