The Muse project: 5 years of experimentations to prepare for the introduction of Internet in the Labour Force Survey

Between 2014 and 2018, an experimental project ("Muse") was carried out at INSEE to prepare for the introduction of Internet data collection for household surveys conducted within the Public Statistical Service. This project focused on the Employment Survey (French Labour Force Survey), first developing an online questionnaire and testing it on a small and large scale, and then involving interviewers to combine the collection on the Internet and by telephone.

The successive tests made it possible to know the share and profile of respondents on the Internet, their response habits, their sensitivity to reminders but also their perseverance in completing the questionnaire or in answering the next waves. The online questionnaire, as the tests progressed, became more user-friendly. The multimode collection protocol has also been adjusted to maximize the overall response rate, which should not be degraded by the introduction of the Internet.

The lessons learned from the Muse project contributed significantly to the development of the collection protocol for the new Employment Survey, which will begin in January 2021, with a Pilot starting a year earlier.