International Workshop on Comparative Survey Design and Implementation, University of Vienna, 23–25 March 2026

I had the pleasure of attending a thought-provoking and invigorating conference in Vienna, and one that was very relevant to my role as Chair of the Esomar Professional Standards Committee.

A striking theme across the event was that many of the highest-quality studies discussed, including major European and other cross-national programmes, are still conducted face-to-face. However, this is becoming increasingly difficult because of rising costs, falling response rates and questionnaire lengths that can stretch to around an hour.

The event focused on a central challenge in contemporary survey research: how to maintain quality, comparability and representativeness as established face-to-face approaches become harder to sustain.

Against that backdrop, the programme was largely about how the field is adapting. A major strand concerned translation, questionnaire design and cultural equivalence, with papers on questionnaire appraisal, multilingual answer scales, translation review, gendered language, and the use of generative AI and LLMs in translation-related workflows.

A second strong theme was the shift towards self-completion and mixed-mode research. The programme covered mode effects, online retention, mixed-mode delivery, and the practicalities of moving surveys away from face-to-face collection. The two broad self-completion models that seemed to sit behind much of this discussion were, first, postal approaches, where respondents either complete a paper questionnaire or are directed online, and second, RDD-based recruitment, where people are contacted by phone and encouraged to complete the survey online.

The workshop also placed considerable emphasis on sampling, recruitment and representativeness, especially in relation to minority groups, migrant populations, non-probability approaches, panel quality and weighting. Closely related to this was a broader concern with data quality, including response times, equivalence testing, standards for survey research, and new approaches to quality control using tools such as automated translation, automatic speech recognition and LLMs.

Other important themes included SOGI (sexual orientation & gender identity) and LGBTQ measurement in cross-national surveys, record linkage and the use of non-survey data, research infrastructures for comparative research, and applications in areas such as family demography and vaccination coverage studies. Altogether, the event covered the full comparative-survey pipeline: question design, translation, recruitment, sampling, mode choice, quality control, linkage and implementation.

In terms of who was presenting, the programme drew particularly heavily on organisations such as GESIS, Verian Group, NIDI-KNAW, University of Tokyo, and University College Dublin, alongside a broad mix of universities, research infrastructures, official bodies and commercial agencies. That mix gave the event a useful balance between methodological development and operational practice.

My key takeaway

My overall impression was that the conference revolved around one big issue: how to preserve rigorous, comparable survey evidence while moving away from expensive and increasingly fragile traditional fieldwork models towards postal, online and mixed-mode approaches.

I thoroughly enjoyed the event, and I hope to attend next year’s version.