Alternative internet oriented survey conducting techniques based on mobile phones Full text

Paris - Mouzafar Morali
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NTUA
2009
Diploma Thesis
Abstract. The present diploma theses aims to analyze, design and finally implement a fully integrated system for conducting internet oriented surveys based on mobile phones. Nowadays internet is regarded as a very popular way for extracting and sharing information and thus it is being widely used all over the world. Consequently, by conducting surveys over the internet enables market researchers to publish their questionnaires towards highly representative panels as well as attach multimedia material to these questionnaires. Also, being able to reach a person almost every ware and anytime on his mobile phone provides great potential especially when conducting "real time" surveys. Several companies and organizations have implemented and used such systems and the results were remarkably successful. The idea is simple: The user (panellist) sings up in the system and becomes a member. From that moment, he can be chosen according to his demographical attributes to participate in surveys. The researcher (expert user) can specify the demographics suitable for each survey. Additionally he is provided with a GUI (Graphical User Interface) in order to build up his questionnaire in a user friendly way. When a survey is launched, its status becomes active. During this phase the expert user can observe the statistical results at any time, while the system is gathering and merging the answers from the panelists. What is more, surveys suitable for mobile phones can be conducted. A panellist can be enabled to participate to such surveys just by installing a Java application in his mobile phone. Mobile surveys are also based on internet services consumption. To sum up, we have implemented a system which provides the functionality needed to realize and support efficiently the scenarios mentioned above.