Snap PDA interviewer – mobile interviewing software comes of age
October 2000
There is no better way to ensure your surveys are truly representative than to use interviewers. In some cases - exit polls or some types of transport and passenger surveys, face-to-face is often the only meaningful way to collect data.
In other cases, while distributing questionnaires for respondents to complete themselves may appear to be a cheaper and easier option, there is a real danger that you will miss out hard to reach people, people who are too busy or just too suspicious to fill it in. This will affect not just the results, but the credibility of your results.
An affordable solution that avoids the mountain of paperwork from interviewing and cuts administrative costs to the bone while improving the accuracy and completeness of your data
Now, using the Snap PDA interviewing device, the old landscape of costs and inconvenience with face-to-face has been reshaped with an affordable solution that avoids the mountain of paperwork from interviewing and cuts administrative costs to the bone while improving the accuracy and completeness of your data. Until now, computer assisted interviewing has meant costly and bulky laptops which were beyond the reach of most budgets. This is not only an affordable computerized solution, unlike laptops, interviewers can actually use it while they are on their feet.
Snap PDA interviewer allows you to present either simple or complex questionnaires on inexpensive handheld personal digital organizers (PDA's) that use Windows CE for interviewers to punch in the answers as they go.
A wide range of PDA devices available from well-known makers such as Hewlett-Packard www.hp.com/jornada and Casio www.casio.com. Means you can choose between palmtop models that incorporate a fold-down keyboard, or for true stand-up portability, go for the handheld stylus-driven model. You can still enter text with the stylus using an on-screen keyboard, which, though slower, is not as fiddly as it first sounds.
Although the screens are much smaller than a laptop PC, there is plenty of room for most questions and answers.
Questionnaires are set up using the standard Snap questionnaire design tool. After this, the questionnaire is simply published then transferred to the PDA using the supplied synchronization cradle
Questionnaires are set up using the standard Snap questionnaire design tool. After this, the questionnaire is simply published then transferred to the PDA using the supplied synchronization cradle - usually a one-button-press operation. The same process is used to transfer the results back for analysis. In situations where interviewers are working remotely, the published questionnaire can be sent by e-mail, then loaded locally from PC to PDA using the same simple procedure.
Lightweight and compact enough to slip into a pocket, interviewers find that their Snap PDA interviewers do not create the same kind of barrier as the traditional clipboard or a laptop PC.
The amount of memory the machines carry means there is effectively no limit to the number of questions or the complexity of the routing you can build into your questionnaire and plenty of capacity to store several day's results. Battery life is rated by at six to eight hours, which is adequate for most interviewing shifts. Lightweight and compact enough to slip into a pocket, interviewers find that their Snap PDA interviewers do not create the same kind of barrier as the traditional clipboard or a laptop PC.
CASE STUDY 1: Snap PDA interviewer gets the survey process flying at Birmingham International Airport
Collecting data from passengers is a round-the-clock activity at Birmingham International Airport. At any one time, five interviewers will be stationed around the airport interviewing customers and recording the results. Surveys range from passenger origin and destination studies to customer satisfaction surveys into the airport's facilities, or surface transportation research. In all, well over 30,000 interviews are conducted and processed every year. When the airport's research manager discovered Snap PDA interviewer, the pocket-sized version of Snap, he realized this was the research tool he had been waiting for.
"Historically, we used paper questionnaires on all our face to face interviewing. But there was always the time lag between a questionnaire being finished and getting the data back into my hands... My objective was to turn things round in the fastest possible time."
It was a question of turnaround time", Kevin Millward, the airport's research manager explained. "Historically, we used paper questionnaires on all our face to face interviewing. But there was always the time lag between a questionnaire being finished and getting the data back into my hands and then on to my internal clients. My objective was to turn things round in the fastest possible time."
Mr Millward made a case to the airport management that time could be saved and data entry costs reduced by adopting the Snap PDA interviewer to the extent that the investment would be repaid within twelve months. He argued that it was just as cost-effective, and indeed operationally simpler, to buy one machine for each interviewer rather than have a smaller pool of shared machines.
Interviewers were soon asking for all their surveys to be on the Snap PDA interviewer
With the purchase approved, the next concern was an interviewing team suspicious of the new technology. This was rapidly overcome once they experienced using the CE devices. Interviewers were soon asking for all their surveys to be on the Snap PDA interviewer - something that is unfeasible because some of the surveys involve the collection of extensive open-ended answers, where recording on paper is a more practical solution. However, Mr Millward is planning to carry out 50% of his work on the CE machines within twelve months, and is on track to make the savings he had predicted.
"This has been brilliant in improving turnaround time. I can walk in the next morning, collect the machines and e-mail the results to my clients in a couple of hours. All you have to do is put the handheld on a cradle. Snap goes and looks for the interviews and imports them automatically."
Setting up questionnaires in Snap has proved to be very straightforward too. "If the questionnaire is simple, we can do the whole process in 24 hours. On paper this would take 3 days at best. I have now got the advantage that if someone wants a survey done in a hurry, with, say, half a dozen questions, we can start interviewing that afternoon."
Taking everything into account, Snap PDA Interviewer has delivered the three benefits most would look for in adopting new technology
Taking everything into account, SnapPDA interviewer has delivered the three benefits most would look for in adopting new technology: it has reduced costs, it is 200% faster and it delivers better quality work. But Kevin Millward feels one of the greatest benefits to him is that his unit is now effectively self-contained, and can avoid unpredictable external resources, or begging favours to get an urgent project done in a hurry.
CASE STUDY 2: Wokingham District Council uses Snap PDA interviewer to move consultation into the community
Wokingham District Council conducts a wide range of surveys into the use and take-up of its many services among the 145,000 citizens that fall within its boundaries, many of which are done in response to the UK government's 'Best Value' initiative. This places a responsibility on local authorities to measure its service delivery in a systematic way.
Wokingham has started to replace many of its paper-based surveys with live surveys conducted using the SnapPDA interviewer. Principal Policy Officer, Roland Potter, explained why.
We might be conducting a survey with housebound and elderly people who cannot access services in the normal way
"We might be conducting a survey with housebound and elderly people who cannot access services in the normal way. Under Best Value, our object is to get in touch with people who don't use our services and can't. The handhelds have moved local government consultation out into the community. That has a number of definite advantages. We're contacting people that are hard to reach, which is a requirement and it gives us the opportunity to build links with the community."
Wokingham DC has previously used Snap for its paper questionnaires. Set-up for Snap PDA interviewer is identical: the only additional skill they had to develop was fitting the texts to the small screens without the need to scroll down - a trick Mr Potter claimed his team learned in half an hour.
In the field, the technology has performed well. Interviewers need 15 minutes to learn it. The batteries will last for at least half a day of interviewing and can be topped up in half an hour. The only restrictions to interview length have come from their own imposed limits, not from the technology.
"We are getting a better response rate. We can focus on people in a way that makes it more demographically representative."
Mr Potter concluded: "We are getting a better response rate. We can focus on people in a way that makes it more demographically representative."
Carole Brading, Quality and Development Officer in the Libraries and Information Service, has first hand experience of using the Snap PDA interviewer to interview the public. "It is very easy to use because it is just a stylus with a touch screen. I like it because it is so compact. I've experienced surveys with a laptop, which is very cumbersome. With this, you are not having to balance bits of paper or a laptop. Initially I had the fear I would not be able to work it. I did always carry paper backup with me just in case, but I never had to use it."
Her estimate, on one library study was that Snap PDA interviewer had reduced the entire process by 50%. In another, she is anticipating even greater savings, in addition to being able to bring all of the processing work in house.
An unexpected benefit of the technology has been in establishing greater rapport with the respondent. "It became quite a discussion point - especially going to the elderly people"...
An unexpected benefit of the technology has been in establishing greater rapport with the respondent. "It became quite a discussion point - especially going to the elderly people. It has assisted rather than putting up barriers. If you are there with a machine and a stylus you don't have to do all the paperwork. You can do person after person. It's quite discreet, much more friendly and it means it's you they see and not the pen and the clipboard"
Conclusions
SnapPDA interviewer is proving itself to be a popular tool with research managers, interviewers and respondents.
- For interviewers it breaks down traditional barriers to interviewing.
- Interviews flow better and interview lengths are correspondingly shorter, which is appreciated by respondents.
- For research managers the benefits are that results are in and out much faster and the whole troublesome business of data entry has gone.
In practice, screen size, battery life, memory capacity and even entering some text have not been an issue. Users find that the Snap PDA interviewer gives outstanding performance on short, stand up interviews where most questions have predefined answers. It also performs well in longer interviews, such as in the home, where it is also feasible to record some free text answers to questions, but the more unstructured the interview becomes, it is correspondingly less practical to use the SnapPDA interviewer.
While the cost savings will make it easier to justify the purchase, the most compelling reasons to use SnapPDA interviewer come from its ability to give you better, more complete and more representative results in a lot less time.