The next frontier of data collection is here. This presentation will discuss how research practitioners and end users are making use of the "anytime, anywhere" data collection capabilities offered by mobile interviewing technologies. The presentation will also compare and contrast available mobile text, web, and voice technologies and show how they are being applied to achieve representative samples. The author will present short case studies demonstrating when and how to effectively use mobile interviewing for surveys, diaries, and ethnographies, as well as how to choose the best technique for a study. The practical limitations of mobile interviewing will also be discussed.

The second half of this presentation will focus on a detailed discussion of the advantages of mobile interactive voice response (IVR) interviewing as a viable alternative to online interviewing based on findings from a recent study conducted by the author. In this study, four cells were tested to compare response rates and times between 1) respondents invited to take an online survey by mobile text; 2) respondents invited to take an automated IVR survey by mobile text; 3) respondents invited to take either an online survey or automated IVR survey by mobile text (respondents could select either option); and 4) respondents invited to take an online survey by email.

The results of the study support the use of mobile text message invitations to increase response rates to online surveys, as well as the use of mobile IVR as a viable alternative to online surveys when speed of data collection is a priority, such as for polling or other time-sensitive research.