Online Survey Retention and Re-engagement: Learning from the COVID-19 Social Study.

This article examines factors associated with survey attrition/retention in an online panel survey with weekly/monthly follow-ups during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also explores the effectiveness of making contact with dropout participants and factors associated with sample re-engagement, as well as motivations and barriers to maintaining survey participation. Our data consisted of over 1.2 million records from over 70,000 participants collected between March 2020 and April 2022. On average, 92.7% participants during weekly follow-ups and 95.9% during monthly follow-ups participated again in a later wave. The high retention rates, to some extent, could be attributed to a high level of altruistic motivations during a global health crisis and to the use of retention strategies to create a project community. A similar set of factors were related to both survey attrition/retention and re-engagement. However, some differences were also found, indicating the possibility of distinct decision processes.