The LISS panel (Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social sciences) is an online household panel. The panel consists of 5000 households in the Netherlands, comprising 8000 individuals. The panel is based on a true probability sample of households drawn from the population register by Statistics Netherlands. Households that could not otherwise participate are provided with a computer and Internet connection.
The LISS panel provides scientists with a facility to carry out surveys, with a focus on longitudinal studies. Data collected in the LISS panel are freely available for academic researchers in the Netherlands and abroad. The datasets are provided in SPSS and Stata formats. The documentation is available in English and Dutch.
The panel is conducted by the CentERdata research institute.
The LISS panel is the core element of a project entitled Measurement and Experimentation in the Social Sciences (MESS). In 2006, the NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) awarded a grant to CentERdata for this project. The MESS project is planned for a period of seven years (2006 to 2013) and entails both an optimal infrastructure for empirical research in the social sciences and the financial resources to carry out this research. The project is strongly geared to integrating different academic disciplines and developing and testing new, innovative research techniques. In addition to the LISS panel, special groups are sampled and interviewed within the MESS project, e.g. immigrants or the elderly.