More on Mobile Survey Results

In the last article we explored some of the benefits of using a smartphone to conduct survey research, including the ability to reach potential respondents anywhere and the willingness of people to use apps and other devices as a way of earning some extra money or points. Today we'll look at some of the weaknesses of this method, and discuss the future of the industry.

Type of Sample – For most companies (although not all), smartphone users do not represent a complete sample. While they can be useful for a variety of types of studies, any research that hopes to randomly poll a representative sample shouldn't expect smartphone users to represent their population. Fewer Questions Per Page – What the smart phone has in ease, it loses in speed.

Only a few questions can fit on a screen when you use the smartphone, causing your respondents to click "next" more often than they would with a traditional online survey. Bugs – Smartphones are still difficult to program, and almost every application has bugs that may reduce the value of the responses you receive. Little Accountability – Anyone can download apps that let them take surveys, and it's possible that these individuals lie in order to get more surveys or answer their surveys quickly without thought to get money paid out to them.

This is true of any type of survey, but little research has been done to ensure it's not prevalent with smartphone users. Little Research – Similarly, little research has been done on smartphone use in general as a way of taking surveys. Smartphones are absolutely useful, but until research is completed there may be aspects of smartphone survey data that affect its reliability or validity.

Smartphones have and will continue to change the way survey research is conducted, and most of those changes will be for the better. At the moment, however, smartphone research is still too new to truly be useful for most companies. Some app developers have tried to take advantage of the market, offering a survey or two when they are available, but rarely do companies use this method, especially because it's not as controlled as survey research requires.

Still, even if app developers do not create apps for surveys, the ability to access the Internet from a smartphone has some clear advantages. If companies can learn how to correctly encourage respondents to use their smartphone to take surveys they send through the mail, response rates should see a fairly large jump.