The speed, immediacy and mobility of this methodology combined with decreasing usage cost and extremely high ownership, makes research using mobile phones an increasingly important technique in the market researcher`s toolkit. Ipsos MORI was a very early adopter in the experimentation of mobile research and now conducts mobile surveys on a regular basis. As mobile research becomes a standard offering, it is essential that we understand how we can design techniques that best interact with the survey participant. Much work has been done to investigate participant engagement for online surveys but there is currently a lack of understanding of the mobile platform. Engaged respondents are less likely to drop-out of surveys and become more loyal survey participants in the future.

Ipsos MORI has been working with our mobile phone technology partner, The Third Degree, to understand how mobile phone surveys can be designed to increase participant engagement. When embarking on this work we considered:

Do many of the same engagement factors of online surveys translate to the mobile research world or do we need a new set of rules?

How does the relationship people have with their mobile phones affect survey engagement?

Does survey engagement depend on the mobile device or type of contract (pay-as-you-go versus contract)?

A series of experiments were run across split samples of mobile phone users to test out various engagement hypotheses. This paper provides insight into the findings of these experiments and recommends a number of ways to improve engagement in mobile surveys. The experiments look at both SMS and WAP interviewing across various demographic groups.