Michigan National Survey Panel aims to offset survey research costs with omnibus surveys
November 6, 2026
ANN ARBOR — Survey research is more expensive than ever, and there are new challenges to securing funding for social science topics. The Institute for Social Research’s (ISR) Michigan National Survey Panel is trying to help.
Faculty at ISR’s Survey Research Center (SRC) have worked for several years to develop the survey panel, referred to as M-Panel for short, recruiting a nationally representative sample of more than 6,700 respondents. The panel of respondents includes an over-sample of households in the state of Michigan, and is designed as a cost-effective way for researchers to collect survey data.
By submitting questions to M-Panel, researchers both at U-M and external to the university, can access a high-quality, nationally representative panel of U.S. adults.
“In the past, each survey would bear the cost of recruiting participants,” said Stephanie Chardoul, director of SRC’s Survey Research Operations unit and managing director of the M-Panel. “With the panel, these costs are shared by several surveys.”
At present, the plan is to release a new omnibus survey every quarter, inviting all panel members to participate as they answer a standard array of questions in addition to those submitted by researchers.
The default questions cover personality, civic engagement, health, housing, social support and social media, survey experiences and attitudes, and demographics, while researcher-submitted questions can focus on topics of interest to the researcher who submits them.
“We will consider all proposed questions and as long as they have a legitimate research purpose — academic and not market or proprietary research — and meet the ethical requirements of human subject research.” said SRC Director Pam Davis-Kean. “Because of this openness and because we will likely have multiple researchers contributing to each omnibus survey, our team is prepared to invest effort into optimizing the flow of each survey to minimize a disjointed feel and to reduce respondent burden.”
If a researcher purchases questions for the survey, the M-Panel survey team will help with question design, specialized programming, and survey administration. Researchers can add as few as three questions to any of the quarterly surveys, though pricing will vary for internal (U-M) and external researchers.
“Once the survey is complete, we will deliver the data from the submitted items as a special dataset to the researcher, along with demographic and background data collected from each panelist as part of the baseline survey they completed during their recruitment,” said James Wagner, research professor at ISR and scientific director of M-Panel.
The SRC M-Panel team is holding a special event at ISR on November 12, 2026 to share more information about the panel and how researchers can benefit. Interested researchers can sign up to attend here. Several short presentations will touch on how researchers may use M-Panel to collect survey data, the process for recruiting panelists, survey design, and panelist engagement and retention, and there will be the opportunity to interact with and ask questions of the leadership team.
University of Michigan Provost Laurie McCauley and ISR Director Kate Cagney will be among the presenters.
Contact: Jon Meerdink ([email protected])