Mobile technology offers researchers a new set of tools for collecting information on people`s attitudes, behaviors, and preferences. While most research in this area has focused on mobile technology as a tool for delivering standard surveys, we broaden this perspective by utilizing smart phones in an "electronic ethnographic" approach. As a research genre that typically uses on-site field work to understand how people interact within a society, ethnography uses a holistic research method founded on the idea that a system's properties cannot necessarily be understood independently of each other.

Building on this concept, we use the functionality of mobile phones and the Web to capture information on people`s attitudes, surroundings, interactions, and behaviors to gain a richer appreciation for the different lifestyles and personalities that characterize a particular population. The Lifestyle 360 project involves a sample of adults who were provided with a specially engineered smart phone that allowed for the administration of a brief survey at periodic intervals throughout the day (approximately 10 three minute surveys per day), prompted the respondent to take pictures of their surroundings, and facilitated location tracking via GPS technology. Information was collected about the respondent`s current location, the activities in which they were engaged, the people they were with, and their mood at the time (i.e., happy / depressed / energetic / etc.). This information was combined with more in-depth information from Web-based pre- and post-surveys as well as an electronic personal journal. Connecting the smart phone and online data provides a holistic lifestyle view of various population segments and a rich data source for documenting real-world experiences. Respondents offered images and words to catalog their daily experiences, often around a specific theme or topic. The collaborative (respondent / researcher) approach empowered participants to share information that might not be captured otherwise, such as moods, likes and dislikes. Researchers gained a better understanding of the attitudes, needs and behaviors of target populations. We provide an overview of the project, detail how the various data collection efforts were administered and integrated, and illustrate how these data are used to better understand populations of interest.