Emerging Techniques of Respondent Engagement: Leveraging Game and Social Mechanics for Mobile Application Research
Jennie W. Lai
The Nielsen Company
Michael W. Link
The Nielsen Company
Lorelle Vanno
The growing usage of smartphone applications (or apps), particularly among young adults, has opened a new frontier for data collection. This emerging method of Computer-Assisted Self-Interviewing (CASI) offers new techniques to engage respondents on the mobile platform in response to the persistent challenge of respondent cooperation. In recent years, game mechanics have been used to draw on users intrinsic motivation to engage them in specific tasks. The tools of game mechanics, such as points, badges, levels, challenges and leaderboards are used to drive desired behaviors (i.e., gamifying the process but not necessarily turning the task completely into a game). The mechanics of social sharing such as comments, posting updates or liking the status of others are engaging features to connect the users within the app community and social networks such as Facebook. It is hypothesized that leveraging both game and social mechanics can maximize respondent engagement for longitudinal data collection. To measure the impact of these emerging techniques for engagement, we conducted a split sample research study contrasting two versions of an iOS app to collect media usage information. One version of the app was fully integrated with game and social mechanics from the start of the data collection period while the other version was initiated without these features adding the game and social mechanics later in phases. This research gathered learning on the effectiveness of these emerging techniques for respondent engagement and offered insights on whether data collection via smartphone app is a viable method for repeated measures especially with the hard-to-reach cohorts.
