Tuesday 16th July
Wednesday 17th July
Thursday 18th July
Friday 19th July
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Envisioning the "survey" of the future: the role of smartphones and other technologies in advancing the practice of survey research 2 |
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| Convenor | Miss Femke De Keulenaer (Gallup Europe) |
| Coordinator 1 | Mr Robert Manchin (Gallup Europe) |
| Coordinator 2 | Mr Henk Fernee (The Netherlands Institute for Social Research/SCP) |
Technological developments, such as the rise of social media, the smartphone, voice recognition and eye-tracking, combined with an explosion in the kinds of data being harvested from the Internet means that what survey researchers now have to work with as "raw data" is very different from 10 years ago.
The focus of this session is the role that technology plays in advancing the practice of survey research; topics could include, but are not limited to the following areas:
- Nowadays, people communicate with each other using various media, such as smartphones, mobile instant messaging, blogs, picture-sharing, wall-postings etc. Individuals' communication media of choice, however, are extremely diverse among different population groups; how can survey researchers accommodate these preferences when collecting information?
- Combining and analysing multiple sources of data with survey data, particularly where "unconventional" data are collected such as smartphone data, geospatial data, mobile instant messaging data, pictures or other attachments contributed by survey respondents.
- Experiences in making data collected via mobile behavioural apps, eye-tracking and facial expression devices etc. relevant and viable as data sources for research. How can this type of data be collected and analysed in the framework of population-based experiments?
- Another promising application of technology is as a direct assistant to the interviewer. Experiences in using portable devices to display maps and geospatial information, and ways to simplify mobile entry of data and access to information for the interviewer (such as by using speech commands etc.).
4th organizer: Dr. Eric Harrison, Eric.Harrison.2@city.ac.uk, City University
People are increasingly accessing the internet with touchscreen mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. For mobile respondents, answering traditional web questionnaires should be as natural and comfortable as any other app on their device. The unique characteristics of mobile devices require a different type of user interface, which the standard web interview systems do not offer.
CentERdata developed a customized XSLT stylesheet to create a mobile version of Blaise based questionnaires. The stylesheet creates a web interface with the look and feel similar to that of a native app. This is a solution that seamlessly fits in the Blaise web architecture and can provide many of the benefits of a fully native app, but at a fraction of the development time and effort.
The mobile version of the questionnaire is optimized for small screens. This includes layout of the question and answer categories, but also includes placement of back/next buttons to mimic a native app. Special attention is given to large layouts, such as tables, which do not easily fit onto a small screen.
The mobile version will also be designed for touchscreen devices. This includes support for gestures to scroll, navigate and perform other actions with the questionnaire. The mobile version adapts the onscreen keyboard to match the different open question types (like numbers or text). With these improvements, answering questionnaires becomes easier and more intuitive for mobile respondents.
The paper looks at the role that technology can play in advancing the practice of face-to-face interviewing. More specifically, we illustrate new ways of using smartphones and tablets during various stages of the data collection process, going beyond solely using these devices as a means to record respondents' answers.
The first part of the paper will address issues related to collecting paradata. All aspects of the interviewer's tasks - locating addresses, completing contact forms, selecting respondents in households etc. - can run via an application on the interviewer's smartphone or tablet. A large amount of paradata will be (automatically) collected and will be almost instantaneously accessible to fieldwork managers, offering new possibilities for responsive survey design and interviewer quality control (e.g. via a built-in GPS locator and time stamps automatically attached to each step).
Another promising application of smartphones and tablets is as a direct assistant to the interviewers themselves; these devices offer various ways to simplify mobile entry of data and access to information for the interviewers (e.g. interviewers can use built-in maps to navigate to the exact location/building that they have to locate). In the last part of the paper, we will illustrate new ways to enrich survey data not only with location-related context data (e.g. using geo-location technology to link geo-spatial crime data to survey data), but also with "non-survey" data collected via the interviewer's smartphone or tablet (e.g. measurements of air quality).
The aging of the population and the need to contain the costs for the treatment of chronic patients has led to the testing of telemedicine systems to provide an effective therapy at home. The many telemedicine systems, tested or already adopted, involve the collection of biometric parameters and their analysis by medical staff, but is not yet used the opportunity to gather additional information directly from the patient.
In order to enhance effectiveness of data collected by telemedicine systems, we propose that:
- the chronic patient has to be an active provider of information
- the tools and methodology developed for web surveys had to be used to simulate a "face-to-face" situation between patient and doctor, that is, the web questionnaire could be seen as a "virtual visit".
In this paper we describe our results obtained in an innovative experimental telemedicine project (A.SCO.L.T.A. Home care of heart failure through Techniques Advanced Digital Communications) for patients with heart failure.
This multidisciplinary research project, conducted in Toscana, has completed the testing phase lasting four months, during which information was collected for 350 "virtual visits". The flow of the doctor questions was generated on the answers given by the patient, and can be personalized using longitudinal data of the same patient. All data (from web questionnaires and from biometrics measurements, like ECG, heart rate, and so on) were stored in a data base and analyzed daily in order to detect changes in health status and alert for medical staff.
The contactability of a sample unit has a strong influence on the success of a contact attempt. By contactability it is meant the propensity for a sample unit to be contacted by the interviewer at any given moment in time. Although widely investigated in the context of traditional survey modes, little attention has yet been given to the subject of the influences on the likelihood of contact in mobile phone surveys.
While some of the knowledge from fixed phone surveys methodology may be transposed to mobile phone surveys as both devices rely on aural communication, mobile phones have their own specificities, and methods and procedures must therefore be adapted to them or newly created. In the context of mobile phone surveys it can be hypothesized that contactability is a function of three factors: a) "at-mobile phone" pattern, b) when and how many times the number is called and c) impediments that prevent the interviewer to establish communication with the mobile phone user (e.g voice mail, caller ID).
The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of several attributes - calling scheduling, mobile phone usage patterns, mobile phone characteristics, social environment and socio-demographic characteristics - on the probability of contact in a mobile phone survey. Data comes from a national mobile phone survey conducted on the general Portuguese population of mobile phone users aged 15 years or older in 2012.
In recent years a trend towards mobile usage of the internet created a new feasible extension for Web survey data collection. Even though, mobile Web coverage is still not on par with fixed Web access and genuine mobile Web surveys are still in their infancies, mobile devices have to be considered with respect to the design of nowadays Web surveys. After all, many Web user shift seamlessly from desktop to notebook to tablet computer to Smart phone. So far, it is an open research question whether it is feasible to make use of the capabilities provided by the mobile network when administering Web surveys (e.g. inviting respondents using text messages sent to the mobile phone numbers of the tablet or Smartphone).
In an online access panel we conducted a randomized experiment comparing traditional e-mail invitations to text message invitations. Panelists who provided their mobile phone number in order to get invitations to surveys via text messages, were randomly invited by either text message or e-mail. Respondents who did not name their mobile phone number got an e-mail invitation.
Results suggest that the mode of invitation influences response and completion rates. Text messages are less effective in comparison to e-mail invitations. In addition to response rates and completion rates we also assessed item-nonresponse and examine how the different invitation modes affected the efficiency of reminders and the timeliness of completion.