Session 18
Communication Methods for User Engagement
4 June 2026
11:00 – 12:30
ŠIBENIK IV
Presentation title
Measuring Satisfaction: The Overall Satisfaction Index as a Strategic Instrument for the Continuous Improvement of Statistical Services
User satisfaction is a key pillar of official statistics, reflecting the relevance and usefulness of statistical products and their alignment with quality principles.
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This study presents the development of an Overall Satisfaction Index (OSI) as a systematic tool that integrates and compares the perceptions of different groups—qualified users, media professionals, and voluntary participants on the INE Spain website—despite the heterogeneity of the questionnaires used.
The OSI is constructed using multivariate analysis techniques that allow the synthesis of overall satisfaction and the determination of the relative contribution of different quality dimensions, such as accessibility, reliability, and relevance. Additionally, it provides a tool to analyze how the perceptions of the surveyed groups regarding the quality of statistical services provided by INE Spain have evolved over recent years.
Taken together, the OSI constitutes a strategic instrument for monitoring user experience and supporting evidence-based continuous improvement processes, enabling more informed, coherent, and user-centered management within the statistical system.
Raúl Hidalgo Fillola
Statistics Spain
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I’m Raúl Hidalgo Fillola. I’ve been working at Statistics Spain in the methodology deparment since May 2024, as a technician in the Quality and Metadata Unit.
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Presentation title
Looks great, responds poorly: lessons from ten years of invitation letter experiments
Relevance & Research Question
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What if the success of your survey depended on a single piece of paper?
As survey researchers, we are now competing harder than ever for people’s attention and time. With the rise of online, self-administered online surveys, interviewers play a smaller role in motivating participation. For these online studies in the Netherlands, households can only be invited by traditional mail — making the invitation letter our sole opportunity to connect. Its wording, tone, access options and layout can decide whether someone visits the link or ignores the request. Over the past decade, Statistics Netherlands has continuously refined its invitation strategy in search of the perfect letter for a diverse population.
Methods & Data
Our research combines qualitative pre-testing with large-scale field experiments. After many rounds of testing, a standard letter was designed that performs consistently well — until three new experiments challenged our assumptions. We examined (1) the effect of adding a QR code for easier access, (2) a shorter version of the letter, and (3) the response to a refreshed, more visually appealing layout. Each experiment used a fresh, representative sample and a corresponding control group.
Results
Adding a QR code had no significant effect (no code: 35.1% vs. QR code: 34.8%, n.s.).
However, the redesigned “fancy” letter, praised in qualitative pre-testing, led to a significant drop in response (35.4% → 32.2%, p = 0.0003).
The shortened letter, by contrast, increased participation (23,7% → 26,8%, p = 0,000) – but also changed the way respondents answered the questions, resulting in fewer short trips being reported in the travel survey.
Added Value
Our findings reveal how intuitive design choices can have unintended consequences. While respondents claim to prefer modern, appealing letters, with QR-codes, actual behavior tells a different story and may subtly affect measurement. This presentation offers ten years of lessons — and a few humbling surprises — from the ongoing search for the holy grail of survey invitations.
Jelmer de Groot
Statistics Netherlands
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Jelmer de Groot has a Masters degree in Communication Science and has been working at statistics Netherlands since 2010, first as a survey methodologist, followed by a job as a survey designer in the data collection department. Since 2017, he is a project manager at the data collection department, responsible for the fieldwork and its preparations in a wide variety of household surveys. His field of interest lies in new ways of data collection and implementation. He has been involved in a series of experiments regarding the redesign of the advance letters within Statistics Netherlands and is now project manager Smart Surveys.
Presentation title
Audience-Oriented Communication: Transforming Data into Accessible Knowledge
The omnipresence of social media in people's daily lives is an inseparable reality of the modern era.
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The consumption of visual microcontent has grown and, in this context, the consumption of statistical data has become an integral part of the range of content consumed. In the field of official statistics, this change represents both a challenge and an opportunity: to maintain its presence and notoriety as a source of official, legitimate and reliable information and knowledge, and, on the other hand, to break with past concepts regarding the form and style of presentation and dissemination of these information packages.
With the aim of making closer, more accessible and civil society-centred institutional communication essential, Statistics Portugal is making efforts to strengthen its presence in digital environments, adopting strategies that value clarity, relevance and usefulness of content, communicating in a clear and perceptible way, transforming a hermetic language, with a strong canonical character, into a more accessible language, without losing the taxonomy that guarantees the accuracy of statistical indicators.
This presentation discusses approaches and practices designed to increase public engagement through communication tailored to their needs, guiding the public towards practical understanding with a clear focus on statistical literacy. The integration of these practices aims to significantly expand the reach of official statistics, promote a more informed understanding of statistical reality, and strengthen the role of institutions as credible sources in an increasingly competitive and digital communication ecosystem. The areas of work will be addressed in terms of strategies and content creation for specific audiences, such as ESC, Explorística, ALEA and ISLP, and the general public, with the aim of questioning strategies and discussing results.
Luís Vieira
Statistics Portugal
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Holds a degree in Public Relations and Advertising and has over 20 years of professional experience related to the management of European Union structural and investment funds, with a particular focus on communication over the last 16 years. Currently works at Statistics Portugal (INE), where she is involved in activities related to statistical dissemination, user support, social media management and the organisation of institutional events.
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Presentation title
Visual storytelling: the rising role of video for communicating official statistics in social media
This presentation examines the growing importance of video as a communication format for organisations responsible for producing and disseminating official statistics.
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In an increasingly overloaded digital information environment, which also results in shorter attention spans, traditional text-based publications and static charts have often difficulties to capture attention beyond specialist audiences. Video offers a dynamic and intuitive medium, in which statistical information can be translated into easily understandable and engaging narratives. The presentation will position video not as a replacement for conventional statistical outputs, but as a complementary format that enhances accessibility and public value.
Particular attention will be given to the rise of a short video format (TikTok, Reels, Shorts) in social media and its role in expanding the reach of official data. The presentation will explore how changes in audience behaviour and consumption patterns in social media have reinforced preferences for concise, visually driven content. Short videos, optimized for viewing on mobile phones and rapid consumption, have proven especially effective in attracting non-expert audiences who may not actively seek statistical information. The implications of shift to visual formats for statistical organisations will be discussed, including changes in content design, different techniques (e.g. animation, data visualisation), production workflows, and distribution strategies.
The presentation will also address best practices in visual storytelling for statistical communication, such as focusing on a clear message and using visual elements to guide audience understanding, at the same time maintaining methodological integrity and transparency. Concrete examples from Eurostat’s social media channels will be used to illustrate these principles in practice, showing more and less successful occurrences, and what lessons were learned from the latter. Selected video campaigns will be presented alongside performance analytics, including reach and audience interaction metrics. These case studies will provide evidence of how choosing the right approach can enhance visibility and user engagement with official statistics when aligned with the specificities of the different platforms.
Finally, the presentation will explore the challenges of using video to communicate official data, including balancing accuracy and creativity, avoiding oversimplification or misinterpretation, and managing resource constraints and production time. It will also emphasize the importance of selecting the right statistics for visual storytelling, recognizing that not all data resonate equally with all audiences. Developing clear editorial criteria and internal competencies is essential to ensuring that video content remains credible, authoritative, and aligned with core statistical values.
Mária Hajdú
Eurostat
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Mária Hajdú is the Team leader responsible for user relations in Eurostat’s Dissemination and User Relations Unit, where she guides the team’s efforts to promote Eurostat products and services to citizens and the press in line with the Eurostat’s Communication and dissemination strategy. Her remit includes the management of Eurostat’s corporate social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X and YouTube, the production and dissemination of euro indicator releases, news items, webinars and Eurostat’s representation in physical events. Further to these outreach activities, she is also in charge of the coordination of media- and fact-checker support, user support and institutional support activities. Prior to joining Eurostat, she worked in different roles for several Commission Directorates-General, from translations through project management to planning and programming. Her academic background is in law and mass media communications.
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Presentation title
From Contact to Participation: User-Centred Communication Strategies in ISTAT’s ‘Well-Being and Safety of People’ Survey
The ISTAT sample survey “Benessere e sicurezza delle persone”, represents a key source for analysing subjective well-being and perceived safety in Italy.
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The survey targets approximately 25,000 individuals aged 16–75, including about 21,000 Italian citizens interviewed via CATI (Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing) and 4,500 foreign citizens interviewed via CAPI (Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing).
Within a quality-oriented and user-centric perspective, the survey adopts a communication and contact strategy aimed at strengthening user engagement and trust in official statistics. The strategy seeks to improve the quality of the contact phase by updating and integrating the sample list with active phone numbers, voluntarily provided directly by the women selected for the survey, thereby ensuring greater confidentiality and respondent control over the interview setting.
Sampled units received an invitation letter followed by a reminder, encouraging them to voluntarily provide a contact phone number either via a toll-free number supported by a human operator or through a dedicated online form, also accessible via QR code. The communication was designed according to persuasive and user-centred principles, emphasizing the social relevance of the survey, guarantees of confidentiality and data protection, and the flexibility of scheduling the interview at a convenient time.
The analysis of engagement among women who voluntarily provided their phone numbers through the available channels, highlights territorial and demographic differences in participation. Certain regions show lower adherence to providing contact information, indicating structural differences in how individuals interact with official statistics. These patterns suggest that communication strategies interact with local socio-demographic contexts and digital accessibility. This contribution pursues two main objectives: first, to assess the impact of the communication strategy and reminder on survey engagement, measured by the rate of voluntary provision of contact phone numbers, with particular attention to territorial and age-related patterns; second, to examine how the voluntary provision of a contact number influences the likelihood of completing the subsequent phone interview, thereby quantifying the relationship between early engagement and effective survey participation.
Federica Pellizzaro
Istat
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Federica Pellizzaro, sociologist, Ph.D. in Applied Research in Social Sciences, is a researcher at ISTAT. She works within the Data Collection Directorate, Direct Investigations and Digital Tools for Data Collection Division, managing various research in the social and healthcare sector. She takes part in national surveys on violence against women.
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Organisation
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