Many market research companies whish to go ahead and take their paper based field surveys (traditionally named CAPI – Computer aided personal interview) and move them into more modern PDA mobile device surveys.
This is of course a great way to utilize the PDA mobile technology to achieve fast ROI and lots of advantages including:
· More accurate data as data entry rules are enforced by the handheld device
· Ability to attach pictures to the survey
· Ability to read GPS position and attach it to the survey
· Reduced costs of printing paper
· Reduced costs of survey distribution to the field surveyors
· Reduced management costs as the handheld device and the central office communicate thus allowing easier management
The simplest way to take your surveys mobile is to get yourself a PDA handheld mobile device – like a Windows Mobile Pocket PC device – and grab Dooblo SurveyToGo (www.dooblo.net/stgi), a pay-as-you-go solution specifically designed for creating PDA mobile surveys.
Once you install this easy to use mobile surveys software you will be able to start designing your mobile questionnaire.
And now, after the long intro, let’s get into the interesting question: How to design a questionnaire for a PDA device?
Well, it’s not too hard but you will have to follow some certain guidelines since designing a mobile PDA survey is not the same as a paper based survey form. Initially it might seem like the platform is inferior to paper, but as you get used to it (and your field surveyors too) you will quickly see that it’s superior to paper in many aspects. Lets start off by setting some basic “rules of thumb”:
- Do not put more then one question in a page. Why? Simply because it will make auto-advance feature not work J and also of course because it’s easier on the eyes.
- Do not put the data entry logic instructions in the questions text – since you will program the survey logic, you shouldn’t waste valuable screen real estate on instructions that will be enforced automatically.
- Keep answers and question texts short and to the point – again, don’t forget screen real-estate is important and you don’t want to end up with a surveyor having to scroll through the screen as it will make data entry slower and clumsier.
- Don’t ask whatever you already know – Don’t ask the surveyor for the time or date of the survey or for the name of the surveyor or any other question you can know the answer by using built in variables or expressions. This can only confuse the surveyor and will cost you more time in the field. Also, if you just asked whether this is a male or a female and have a later question that needs this data, don’t ask it again…
After these rules of thumb, you are basically good-to-go on starting to design your surveys. Don’t forget to first create a test-surveyors group, and test your survey BEFORE you distribute it to the field, but more on that in a future post I am planning about the whole process of “rolling out” a PDA based survey…
Don’t forget you can always reach me with questions at ofer@dooblo.net or just comment to this post. And as always, my recommended tool for doing field data collection and mobile surveys is SurveyToGo J
Happy “survey designing”!
Tags: field data collection, mobile survey, Mobile surveys, PDA forms, pda quistionnaires, pda survey, PDA surveys, questionnaires, survey software
