Back to Overview of Sessions

Session Details

Many social surveys, both cross-sectional and longitudinal, include the collection of biomeasures. While traditional questionnaires can obtain self-reported assessments of general health, diagnosed disease and health behaviours, it is known that they can be prone to misreporting. Objective health measures can add to survey data considerably, enabling researchers to discover things that cannot be captured through self-reported measures. The inclusion of objective measurements within social surveys allows us to assess health with significantly greater accuracy and therefore to deepen our understanding of the interplay between social and biological factors in explaining human behaviour.
Such measurements encompass a range of anthropometric (e.g. height, weight, waist), functional (e.g. grip strength, balance), and sensory measurements (e.g. hearing), as well as biological samples (e.g. blood, saliva, urine), other physiological health measurements (e.g. blood pressure, lung function), and device-based measurement of physical activity.
Typically these data are collected either in clinics or at participants’ homes and may be carried out by trained field interviewers or by those with medical training and expertise (such as nurses). Technological advances and the development of minimally invasive techniques of data collection have increased the feasibility of collecting biomeasures at home and by fieldworkers with no medical training. Respondent-led collection of their own biomedical data is also now emerging as a data collection method – for example, some studies now ask respondents to self-collect dried blood spots. Additionally, the increase in the use of smartphone apps (e.g. activity tracking, food logs) and wearable technology (e.g. fitness trackers, smart watches, smart eyewear) has led to a growing interest in using such technology for data collection in survey research.
This session invites survey practitioners to share their experiences of incorporating the collection of biomeasures into social surveys. We welcome submissions relating to:
• Innovative approaches to the collection of biomeasures
• Comparisons of objective measures with self-reported data
• Analyses to assess the diagnostic ability of biomarkers
• Training of fieldworkers to collect biomeasures
• Respondent-led collection of biomeasures
• Methods to maximise response to and/or representativeness of biomeasures
• Collecting biomeasures in special populations (e.g. older people)
• Ethical challenges in the collection of biomeasures (e.g. relating to feedback of results, consent for ongoing use of biological samples)
Papers need not be restricted to these specific examples.