The word "Mobile" has undoubtedly become the most commonly used word we see around. It has given an altogether new dimension to research and give a context that was perhaps never understood before this. It gives a lot of advantages that the researcher seeks that are perhaps visualised or dreamt by the researcher when we wants to see the kind of perfect accuracy in hi results. To begin with, it brings into life the idea of in time feedback and creates that synergy between the respondent and researcher, even if they are at different locations from each other. There is indeed a great growth in mobile phone research but still it is not exponential, like the way it could have been. What do you think are the reasons behind it?
One perspective of research says that mobile phone surveys are on the rise and the other perspective that runs simultaneously says that the dropout rates of smart phones are double. Respondents do agree in participating in research where smart phone is a medium but it’s a deterrent or hurdle in successful completion of the event is the difference in the screen size of the respondents, thus affecting their efficiency to comprehend and respond and the challenges of data entry. It is important in this phase that the screen size, the functions of data entry and the length of the survey should have the flexibility to fit into the situation of the respondent and not just the need of the respondent.
The research fraternity has to accept and appreciate the fact that a great amount of comfort has been introduced in research with the ease with which the respondents can access and use the functions of a smart phone. Researchers are getting acquainted and adopted to the use of smart phone in research and progress is on in trying to overcome the barriers that we earlier discussed about the size of the screen and text size consequently. Some tips that we discuss here could be helpful for the researcher to be able to adopt this trend in a better and more useful manner:
- Be adaptive and positively responsive to change
- Try to incorporate the advantage of technology in your research be giving alternatives to respondents to choose from in desktop, mobile phone options when giving responses.
The question that is yet to get us a convincing answer is that whether research would be able to accept and adapt to the methods and expectations that are changing or no?