The Dynamic Surveys for Dynamic Life Courses (DSDLC) project addresses three key challenges in the collection of life course data in self-administered online surveys: response burden, data quality and response rates. Currently, there is limited experience and knowledge of collecting such data in online panels.
One aim of this project is to develop an innovative survey tool that enables participants to report life events in a timely and self-determined manner. The newly developed web application will integrate the Life History Calendar (LHC), which is already being used in another DZHW study and now also enables the continuous recording of life events. In addition to developing this innovative survey tool, another project goal is to evaluate this method. For this purpose, an experiment will be conducted with two samples to examine how the continuous reporting of life events affects response burden, data quality, and response rates.
DSDLC is being conducted in co-operation with the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi). The project on dynamic life course surveys is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as a part of the Infrastructure Priority Programme „SPP 2431: New Data Spaces for Social Sciences“ for a period of three years.
