Frequently asked questions for panel members

We will link your survey responses with certain administrative data from Statbel (Belgium’s statistics office). Initially this will be general information about the region where panel members live; later we may add other general characteristics such as occupational type or housing situation.

To make your contributions more valuable and to avoid asking questions that are already known from administrative sources and/or that you may not easily know yourselves. This saves time and improves research quality.

First: general regional information. For instance, we may use rural vs. urban indicators (in what kind of environment you live) or regional statistics on population characteristics (what kind of people live in the place where you live, e.g. the share of people in your area who rent their place or own it; the share of people in employment in the area where you live). Later: general characteristics will be added like your profession type or housing situation. These are used at an aggregated/general level only.

No. Names and addresses are never shared with researchers. The data contain only general characteristics, and results cannot be used to identify individuals.

No. Researchers only see aggregated/general attributes (example: “panelist 4856 lives in a rural area”; panelist 4856 possesses a car). Examples of what is not shared is the exact village you live in, or your employer.

Only accredited researchers using The Social Study’s data (and governed by the project’s data protection and confidentiality rules). Statbel supplies general characteristics; The Social Study manages secure access. The data will only be available for scientific use.

Data handling follows strict security and confidentiality procedures. Researchers receive only de-identified, generalised variables; identifying fields like name and address are not included in the datasets. As for everything for The Social Study, it is closely monitored by the Data Protection Officers of the universities and Statbel.

No. The linked data is used only for approved scientific research projects conducted in the public interest. There is no commercial sale of individual-level identifying data.

Yes, this is possible to opt out. You can still remain panelist but your administrative data will not be linked. This will not have any negative consequences for you.

The goal is to reduce the time you spend on some survey questions (so it may save you time). However, the frequency of surveys is not changing; we’ll still invite you to complete a questionnaire every 8 weeks with the same incentive level.

Questions already available in administrative sources (e.g., regional statistics and some demographic characteristics) may be removed from future questionnaires.

Send us an e-mail at panel@thesocialstudy or call (NL) 016/71 37 10 on Tuesday 14–16h and Thursday 10–11h or (FR) 0473791185 on Tuesday 14-16h. Outside of these hours, you can leave us a voicemail message and we will call you back as soon as possible.

No. The linkage is for scientific research only; it does not change administrative records or affect benefits/taxes. Data are used in pseudonymized/aggregated form for research, which means you are not identified.

The process is carried out by Statbel as a Trusted Third Party. They link data using an internal identification key which is removed from the dataset before researchers access it. This ensures that individual identities remain confidential. Your answers to surveys from The Social Study can never be traced back to you.

You can only participate in The Social Study if you are invited by us. When we look for new panel members, we select a group of citizens from the population register. Only people from this randomly drawn sample can participate. When you are invited to participate in The Social Study, you will receive a letter and information brochures with additional information about The Social Study. You can then either complete a welcome questionnaire online right away or complete this questionnaire together with an interviewer a few weeks later.

We invite you to participate in The Social Study. The first time, you will fill out a short questionnaire to get to know The Social Study. You can do this online, using the link and code in the letter. You can also do this together with an interviewer, who will visit your home after a few weeks. At the end of the questionnaire, you can decide to participate in The Social Study. If you decide to participate, we will thank you with a reward of 8 euros. After joining, you will be invited six to ten times a year to complete a questionnaire, either online or on paper. For each completed questionnaire, you will receive a reward of 8 euros.

A panel is a fixed group of people who fill out questionnaires on various topics on a regular basis.

As a panel member, you will complete a questionnaire every six weeks, either online or on paper. You will have about a month to complete the questionnaire. For each completed questionnaire, you will receive a reward of 8 euros. When you have completed 6 questionnaires, you will receive an additional reward of 20 euros. You can participate for as long as you want. The Social Study is designed to do research about changes over time. Therefore, the longer you participate, the better we can measure these changes. 

You can still participate in The Social Study, even if you do not have a computer or access to the internet. You can complete the welcome questionnaire together with an interviewer. During the interviewer’s visit, you can also indicate that you would like to complete the questionnaires on paper in the future. After the interviewer’s visit, we will send you a letter and infobrochure with more information about the next steps. Every six weeks you will receive a questionnaire by postal mail. You can return it to The Social Study free of charge using the pre-stamped envelope we send you together with the questionnaire. You will receive your reward of 8 euros in your bank account once we have processed your completed questionnaire if you returned the questionnaire before the deadline.

To achieve a reliable representation of the entire Belgian population, it is important that as many as possible selected persons participate. Only if this is the case, we will be able to make reliable statements about what the population thinks. The panel consists of about 5,000 people. The panel includes men, women, younger and older persons, who have lived in Belgium for generations or only moved here very recently, with high and low incomes, employed and non-employed, married and single persons,… Your participation will help scientists from universities with their research. The participation of every panel member is important to be able to do reliable research. 

Completing a questionnaire takes approximately between 15 and 20 minutes. 

The Social Study was created together by the eleven Belgian universities. Statbel provides a sample of randomly selected Belgians who are contacted and asked to participate in the panel. The research agency Ipsos/MCM takes care of the initial contacts with the selected individuals and asks them to participate in The Social Study. From the moment a person has confirmed their participation, they will only have contact with staff members of The Social Study. These staff members are affiliated to one of the Belgian universities.

You have been selected by chance from the National Register together with 18.000 other Belgians.

You can log in via https://www.thesocialstudy-panel.be/ with your email address and your chosen password. Have you forgotten your password? Then you can choose a new password by entering your e-mail address on the login page and clicking “Forgot your password?”

You will receive your reward in your bank account as soon as we have processed your questionnaire. This will still take a few weeks after the deadline.

If you decide not to participate in The Social Study after completing the welcome questionnaire, you can keep the 5 euros gift card you received with the letter. You will not receive any additional reward.

After the deadline in the invitation letter to participate in The Social Study, you can still decide to participate and you will still receive a reward. If you choose to complete the questionnaires on paper and you return the questionnaire after this date, you will unfortunately not receive a reward for completing the questionnaire.

TSS operates on the lawful bases of being a task in the public interest and necessary for research and archiving purposes, as outlined in both the General Data Protection Regulation and the Act on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data. Upon registration, panel members have also provided their ethical consent to become part of the panel. To ensure that all ethical standards are met, researchers must have their proposed study approved by the ethical review board of their institution, and provide a certificate of approval during submission. The data protection statement for panel members can be found here.