Blending Survey and Passive Data

Abstract

As survey costs increase and response rates decrease, researchers are looking to alternative methods to collect data from study subjects. Passive data are data collected from subjects without posing questions and recording responses. Examples are passive data are administrative records held by government agencies, location data collected from smartphones, and activity data from fitness devices. Researchers need more information about the quality of passive data before they can use it to supplement or replace survey data. This talk presents a technique to evaluate the quality of administrative and survey data simultaneously.