Mobile Devices for Survey Data Collection

该项目将研究移动设备，特别是智能手机和平板电脑，作为调查数据收集的工具。这些设备对调查研究人员的吸引力是显而易见的。由于它们重量轻且相对便宜，它们使使用计算机辅助个人访谈等现有调查模式收集数据变得更容易。这项研究将调查使用这类设备带来的三个问题。首先，这些设备允许的输入方法(如触摸屏界面)对许多用户来说相对陌生，可能会造成响应问题。尽管这些界面有时用于笔记本电脑，但平板电脑和智能手机需要它们，这使得可用性问题变得更加核心。其次，平板电脑和智能手机上的屏幕比笔记本电脑或台式电脑上的屏幕小得多。网络调查的实验证明了“视觉突显”的重要性。受访者需要使用的任何信息都应该立即对他们可见，而不必执行任何操作(如鼠标单击)来使信息可见。即使是眼球运动的需要，也可能有效地使信息看不见。由于移动设备的屏幕较小，与笔记本电脑或台式电脑相比，让受访者看到所有潜在有用的信息可能要困难得多。最后一个问题是在这些设备上收集的数据的隐私意识。当计算机管理问题时，受访者愿意透露自己的敏感信息，而网络调查似乎保留了早期计算机化自我管理方法的优势。但目前尚不清楚，当这项调查在平板电脑或智能手机上通过互联网进行时，受访者是否会表现出同样的坦率。两个实际的现场实验和一项可用性研究将检验这些问题。这两个实验都将在一次面对面的调查中进行。第一个实验将笔记本电脑与平板电脑和智能手机进行比较，并将考察屏幕尺寸和输入方法对中断、丢失数据、完成时间和响应质量指标的影响。第二个实验将比较同样的三个数据收集平台作为收集敏感信息的工具。这项实验将要求受访者评估问题的敏感性，因为项目敏感性可能会随着收集数据的设备的不同而不同。调查是美国社会科学家和政策制定者的核心工具，调查研究仅在美国就是一个价值数十亿美元的行业。任何一系列技术进步，如智能手机和平板电脑的广泛采用，都可能对调查的进行方式产生重大影响。尽管无论是否进行这项研究，移动设备都将被广泛用于调查，但这项工作将制定使用此类设备收集调查数据的实用指导方针，并将提醒调查研究人员注意这些设备的一些潜在陷阱。

This project will examine mobile devices, specifically smartphones and tablet computers, as vehicles for survey data collection. The appeal of these devices for survey researchers is clear. Because they are lightweight and relatively inexpensive, they make it easier to collect data using such existing survey modes as computer-assisted personal interviewing. The research will examine three issues raised by use of such devices. First, the input methods that these devices permit (such as touchscreen interfaces) are relatively unfamiliar to many users and may create response problems. Although these interfaces are sometimes used on laptops, tablets and smartphones require them, making usability concerns more central. Second, the screens on tablets and smartphones are considerably smaller than those on laptop or desktop computers. Experiments on web surveys demonstrate the importance of "visual prominence." Any information that respondents need to use should be immediately visible to them without their having to perform any action (such as a mouse click) to make the information visible. Even the need for an eye movement may effectively render information invisible. Because of the small screens on mobile devices, it may be much harder to make all of the potentially useful information visible to respondents than it is with a laptop or desktop computer. The final issue is the perceived privacy of data collected on these devices. Respondents are willing to reveal sensitive information about themselves when a computer administers the questions, and web surveys seem to retain the advantages of earlier methods of computerized self-administration. But it is unclear whether respondents will display the same level of candor when the survey is administered over the Internet on a tablet computer or a smartphone. Two realistic field experiments and a usability study will examine these issues. Both experiments will be conducted in a single, face-to-face survey. The first experiment will compare laptop computers with tablets and smartphones and will examine the effects of both screen size and input method on breakoffs, missing data, completion times, and indicators of the quality of the responses. The second experiment will compare the same three data collection platforms as vehicles for collecting sensitive information. The experiment will ask respondents to assess the sensitivity of the questions, because item sensitivity may vary as a function of the device used to collect the data.Surveys are a central tool for social scientists and policymakers in the United States, and survey research is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States alone. Any set of technological advances, such as the widespread adoption of smartphones and tablet computers, is likely to have a major impact on how surveys are done. Although mobile devices will be widely used for surveys regardless of whether this research is done, the work will produce practical guidelines for using such devices to collect survey data and will alert survey researchers to some of the potential pitfalls of these devices.