Measuring needs and preferences

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Finding out how many citizens have which needs, and what their preferences are between alternative options (e.g. through surveys, opinion polls, preferenda).

  • Some consultations set out to find what particular groups of people need.
  • Others try to find out what preferences people have between different options.
  • In either case, apart from discussion systems, we often use surveys and votes to quantify the needs or preferences.
  • Computers can help send out surveys, collect the results, and analyse them. They can also be used to run a quick vote in a meeting, or by subtle analysis of preferences, find underlying consensus between oponents.

E-polling/E-voting

Here we are not talking about voting for representatives, but choosing options on issues.

  • voting software can help analyse votes
  • voting hardware can collect votes from dozens or thousands of people at once
    • wireless voting systems: Xtol, vPad
    • text message (SMS) voting

Online surveys

Online survey cycle

An online survey is designed to replace traditional paper questionnaires.

Examples:

  1. mobile phone Internet service
  2. various types of survey question

On-line Survey Cycle:

  1. Design the survey, edit the questions.
  2. Respondents fill in the survey in their web browsers.
  3. Send reminders and invitations by e-mail.
  4. Get statistics of results.

Online survey tools:

  • Survey sites, such as Survey Monkey
  • Free and Open Source Software, such as PHP Surveyor, which we have used
  • Commercial software. Look for software written by people who understand web programming, not just crude attempts to replicate paper survey design on-line.
  • Commercial services, provided by market research companies like Milward Brown.