The panel maintenance survey experiment was conducted as part of the regular The Tasmania Project surveys between June and October 2022. The Tasmania Project is a survey research project conducted in Tasmania, an island located south of the Australian mainland and one of the eight Australian states/territories. The Tasmania project uses a volunteer online panel of adult Tasmanian residents who participate in regular online surveys. To maximize unit response and minimize attrition, as well as to offer panelists a better panel and survey experience, organizations managing online panels have to carefully plan their panel maintenance and different communication solutions. In this study, which used an experimental design, two between-wave contact approaches were tested to determine if they can have a positive effect on response - sharing survey results between survey waves with panelists and sending prenotifications/advanced emails. The analysis revealed that certain solutions can be generally effective in increasing response, but mostly in the more regularly participating group of panelists. The data can also be used to explore certain trends in panel response behavior in a (regional) volunteer online panel.

The described online panel of Tasmania adult residents was recruited in 2020 and regularly replenished in the following years using nonprobability sampling methods including self-selection, convenience sampling, quota sampling, and snowball sampling (i.e., via social media, newspaper ads, and mailing lists). In this survey experiment, all The Tasmania Project panel members recruited by June/July 2022 were included to study panel maintenance solutions. To generate these data, survey paradata from two The Tasmania Project surveys were combined. The data do not include survey data, i.e., responses from The Tasmania Project panelists.