Omnibus Surveys FAQ

Contact us at surveyRSP@rand.org by July 20, 2026. There is limited space for this first-come, first-served opportunity.

The RAND Survey Panels (RSP) management team will review all items that have been submitted and provide feedback, if necessary, on ways to improve the clarity and to ensure the reading level is appropriate. After the survey has been programmed, you will have an opportunity to test it and sign off before the survey goes into the field.

General population, youth, and parent omnibus surveys are typically fielded two times per year; once in the fall and once in the spring, depending on demand. The teacher and school leader omnibus surveys field annually in the fall. However, all omnibus surveys will field only if enough questions have been submitted.

Five to seven weeks after the survey closes.

RSP submits omnibus surveys to RAND’s Human Subjects Protection Committee (HSPC) for approval. You do not need IRB approval from your own institution if you are an external client. RAND researchers will need to submit their omnibus survey questions to RAND’s HSPC as part of their project approval.

You can submit items to one or more of the following omnibus surveys. More information about each of the panels can be found on our website.

• American Teacher Panel: national sample of 1,000 public school teachers in grades K–12
• American School Leader Panel: national sample of 1,000 public school principals serving grades K–12
• American Youth Panel: national sample of 1,000 youth aged 12–21
• American Parent Panel: national sample of 1,000 parents who have at least one child between the ages of 12 to 17 living in their household
• American Life Panel: national sample of 2,000 adults ages 18+

There is a 2-question minimum per omnibus survey. If you are interested in submitting more than 10 questions to a single omnibus survey, we can discuss the feasibility of a standalone survey.

Acceptable question formats include single/multiple selection items (limit of 10 response options), Likert scales, numeric entry, sliding scale, and grid items. A wider range of item types are available on standalone surveys. If you have questions about an item type not listed here, please contact us.

Omnibus questions should be short, straightforward questions that require a single response and take no more than about 20 seconds for a person to answer. A grid item counts as one item for each row, even if rows are shown on the same screen.

Information on how we weight the data can be found in this technical document.

In addition to the standard variables, we have several restricted-use variables available at an additional cost of $2,000 per variable. Availability of restricted use variables varies by panel. Restricted variables include things like geographic indicators (e.g., census tracts, zip codes), federal school identifiers, detailed information on household composition, and detailed race and ethnicity information. If there are other variables of interest that you do not see listed here, please contact us to determine whether they may be available.

The American Youth Panel and American Parent Panel omnibus surveys typically run at the same time, and we encourage researchers to submit questions to both to gain both youth and parent perspectives. Unfortunately, while there may be overlap in the households which participate in each survey, omnibus surveys are not designed to produce dyads. If your goal is to collect analyses with require parent-child dyads, we recommend discussing with our team separate data collection specifically designed to support such an analysis.

• American Life Panel: 9th grade
• American Parent Panel: 9th grade
• American Youth Panel: 7th grade

You are welcome to include the same questions on multiple omnibus surveys. However, each individual omnibus survey will be drawn as a cross-sectional sample. Although some respondents may be sampled and respond to more than one omnibus survey, any overlap is incidental. The amount of overlap you are likely to see depends on the panel. Please contact us if you intend to use omnibus data longitudinally rather than as repeated cross sections so we can help you determine whether this data use is appropriate.

Omnibus surveys are not designed to target subpopulations. Depending on your intended target population, we may be able to target a question to a specific population, using a screener question to determine who will see subsequent questions. However, because sampling for omnibus surveys will be for national samples, you will receive fewer responses, and our survey weights might not be appropriate for your use case. Typically, if you are looking for responses from a specific subpopulation, you will be better off with a stand-alone survey. Please contact us to discuss your specific situation.

The American Youth Panel does not accept omnibus survey questions on sensitive topics. Examples of topics that cannot be included on a youth omnibus survey include sexual activity, drug use, suicide and self-harm, and health or mental health conditions. These topics may be able to be included on a stand-alone survey, subject to IRB approval and additional levels of parental consent for minors.

Other panels do not have specific restrictions, but the RAND Survey Panels management team may determine on a case-by-case basis if there are questions submitted that it does not feel are appropriate for an omnibus survey.

If you have questions about whether a topic is appropriate for an omnibus survey, please contact us early, and we are happy to discuss with you.

Pricing for simple questions varies by panel and reflects differences in recruitment and incentive costs. More complex questions will be priced separately.

• American Teacher Panel: $2,000 per simple question
• American School Leader Panel: $2,000 per simple question
• American Youth Panel: $3,000 per simple question
• American Parent Panel: $3,000 per simple question
• American Life Panel: $2,000 per simple question

Invoices are typically sent out when the survey is in the field and payment is due before data can be shared. We will not deliver your survey data until we can confirm payment has been received.

If you are a RAND researcher, we will charge your project directly for the cost of the question(s) you submit. If you are external to RAND, we will invoice your institution.

RAND does not require a contract for questions on omnibus surveys. If your institution does, we will determine on a case-by-case basis whether we are able to accommodate this. There may be an additional fee for processing costs if a contract is required.

We will offer suggestions on your questions after you submit them. If you need additional guidance on drafting questions, we can provide support on question design for a fee.

Yes, you can use the omnibus to pretest survey items. If you want to conduct cognitive interviews to test interpretation of items before fielding, you will need to do that testing on your own, prior to fielding the items as part of the omnibus.

Yes, as long as we are able to invoice your institution.

RAND Survey Panels owns all data collected through all the panels. You will have exclusive access to the data for a period of one year, although embargo periods can be extended on a case-by-case basis. After that embargo period, RAND may make your survey data available to researchers upon request for a fee.

You own the wording for any survey questions that you have developed. If you have used or adapted questions from existing surveys, you must specify this in a source note in your survey submission.

Each person on your team who will have access to the raw data must sign a data use agreement (DUA) before we give them access to the data. We will reach out to your team to identify which person(s) will need access to the raw data. We are happy to accommodate additional members after the survey fielding period if your team expands after the initial DUAs have been signed. However, any new members that will touch the data need to contact us directly to obtain data. ALL DATA SHARING WILL BE DONE DIRECTLY BY RSP.