LISS panel

Infrastructure and User Services

The Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) panel, launched in 2007, is one of five major research infrastructures funded by the Dutch government through the NWO BIG program. It stands out for its open access and population representativeness and provides a unique, cost-effective platform for researchers worldwide, fostering innovation in social science research and beyond.

The LISS panel consists of 5,000 Dutch households, comprising of ~7,500 individuals, and is recruited via a probability sample from population registers by Statistics Netherlands. Households lacking a computer and/or Internet access receive the necessary equipment.

Key elements of the facility are: 

1. Longitudinal core questionnaires and experimental modules proposed by researchers from all over the world. The core questionnaires, repeated annually and designed with assistance from international experts in the relevant fields, contain questions on topics such as health, work, income, education, religion, political opinion, values, norms, and personality. Data are freely available via the LISS Data Archive. Researchers who collect new data using the LISS panel have the opportunity to link their data with the rich data of all other studies.
2. Innovative data collection. Besides traditional questionnaires, the facility accommodates innovative ways of asking survey questions, e.g., exploiting visual tools on the screen or collecting data in other ways than through survey questions. 
3. Linking with administrative data. Administrative data archived at Statistics Netherlands can be linked with LISS panel data. Statistics Netherlands provides a remote access facility through which the linked data can be used by any interested researcher.

Examples/description of the type of research

The LISS panel is an innovative data collection facility intended to boost and integrate research across various disciplines. It truly allows for connections across domains; researchers using the LISS panel represent a large variety of scientific disciplines, such as economics (health, behavioural, marketing, social), public administration and political science, psychology, epidemiology, survey statistics / methodology, criminology, decision theory, sociology, dietetics, linguistics, philosophy, demography, religion studies and theology, social geography and planning, communication science, humanities, cultural anthropology, mathematics, medicine, arts and architecture, and law.

The LISS panel makes it possible to: 

• Collect longitudinal data for substantive research in the social and life sciences (and beyond);
• Develop, test, and utilize technological innovations in survey tools and measurement techniques;
• Conduct experiments and collect (quasi-)experimental data;
• Link panel data to various administrative data (e.g. administrative records held by Statistics Netherlands);
• Increase linkages with other population-representative surveys.

The LISS panel is open to researchers around the world. Examples of research questions that can be particularly well studied using the LISS panel are in the field of survey methodology (including the use of new technology in data collection) and decision-making (e.g. financial decisions, retirement, disentangling the causal relations between socio-economic status and health, well-being and quality of life). The LISS panel creates the possibility of studying in depth the relation between different kinds of measures and how these vary with individual circumstances.

How to access the infrastructure

Access to the LISS panel and the LISS Data Archive (LDA) is open to every academic researcher. After completing the fieldwork, data are delivered to the researcher who commissioned the data collection within one month or, for more complex data, within a mutually agreed period. About six months after delivery data are made available through the LISS Data Archive (https://www.dataarchive.lissdata.nl/). Academic researchers from around the world signing a confidentiality statement can use the archive to access the data for free. The LDA has been awarded the CoreTrustSeal Data Repository certification confirming adherence to the guidelines for Trusted Digital Repositories.