'Evaluating Consent to Linkage to the Electoral Register' in Understanding Society Innovation Panel Wave 10: Results from Methodological Experiments Tarek Al Baghal (ed.) Understanding Society Working Paper Series No. 2018-06 May 2018

Linking survey responses and the electoral register is a core part of data collection in political science. This experiment shows that there is no difference in consent rates if the motivation for data linkage is changed to a more truthful one. This is encouraging for researchers of registration and turnout; survey respondents do not object to their data being linked for checking potential errors in their reporting. It also is consistent with the idea that consent to link survey data to information from the electoral register is driven by a consideration of the linkage itself, rather than being overly reliant on question wording. This view is supported by the additional finding that there is also no difference in the rates of opt-out consent between two alternate motivations. The second finding at this stage is that far fewer people opt out of consent than refuse their consent when they are asked to opt in.