Mobile Polling

Summary

Mobile Polling allows audiences to provide live feedback and vote on choices via their cell phones. Polling can be conducted live during a meeting format, as with keypads, or among dispersed respondents.

Tool Description

Mobile Polling is an eParticipation tool that allows people to conveniently submit votes via text message from their cell phones or a mobile web page on their smart phone.

This technology can be extremely effective in meeting formats, used in place of handheld keypads. This enables meeting facilitators to collect feedback, prioritize options or quiz audiences live, but also enables people to vote from remote locations at the same time. Most often, this technology is linked to a digital display providing a graphic correlation to the results. Mobile Polling can also be used over longer time periods and not in conjunction with meetings to collect feedback on specific questions.

The questions formats offered by Mobile Polling services are somewhat limited (numerical votes only), but the tool can be used to collect important feedback and opinions, prioritize choices, or quiz an audience.

Mobile Polling is intuitive to set up and run and can greatly enhance civic engagement projects by capturing the outcomes of round table discussions and prioritizing the results. There are numerous services available offering mobile polling, with varying costs, support levels, and options. Costs are typically very reasonable for small numbers of respondents (under 100) and rise with larger numbers.

Summary of Costs

$0-99
Associated Costs
  • Acquisition
  • Facilitation

Strengths

  • Mobile Polling is an easy-to-use technology tool that provides instant feedback which can greatly increase the depth and participation of community meetings
  • Mobile polling can help you reach broader audiences than web-based polling, paper surveys, or meetings; research shows that mobile phone adoption is widespread even among disadvantaged groups
  • Mobile polling can be much simpler and cheaper than comparable technologies like keypad polling

Limitations

  • While increasingly common, there are still community members without cell phones, and a number with mobile devices that do not text message
  • Mobile polling offers limited variety in terms of the types of questions you ask
Submitted By: svannostrand
Last Updated: August 24, 2012, 12:30 pm

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