Measuring needs and preferences

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
  • Deborda
• 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.