To distribute the survey via SMS, My World 2015 partnered
with international and local telecommunication companies. For the majority of
SMS outreach and distribution, My World 2015 worked with
GeoPoll, an international mobile survey
group that partners with telecommunication companies throughout the world. In Yemen,
where the initial goal of reaching 10 thousand respondents via mobile has
exploded to yield more than 40 thousand responses, the highest response rate
via mobile in all the countries surveyed, My World 2015 worked with Y-Telecom,
a local mobile service provider.
The My World 2015 survey via SMS has been done through a
targeted outreach strategy that emphasizes one phone equals one respondent and
which offers no financial incentive to encourage response rate. The decision to
exclude financial incentives intends to ensure respondents honestly fill out
the survey with a conscious desire to provide real information as opposed to achieve
some monetary reward. Alternative incentives used by My World 2015 include celebrity
endorsements and the concept of contributing to the community through
advocating important issues.
Local partners and on-the-ground networks led promotion for
the survey, many of which promoted both the offline and online versions of the
survey, depending upon the context and audience.
Approach – What was the thinking behind the SMS distribution of the survey?
The My World 2015 distributors decided to ensure that
each phone receiving the survey is allowed
to fill out the survey only once, despite
research
as well as anecdotal evidence indicating that, in many developing countries,
mobile phones are often shared among families and friends. The were two reason
for this approach: the survey aims to be representative, ensuring no one
respondent fills out the survey more than once, and My World 2015 offers an IVR
alternative in local languages for those without their own mobile phones in
Yemen, Rwanda, and India – as many people as desired in these countries could
call toll-free numbers
from the same
mobile phone and answer the voiced version of the survey (i.e. If you are a
woman, please press 1, if you are a man, please press 2…)
No incentive was
offered to make certain respondents filled out the survey to share
information as opposed to gain a reward. GeoPoll reportedly noted that this
lack of incentive would affect the overall response rate to the survey
(resulting in a response rate of only 1% versus 3-5% or more if an incentive
such as additional phone credit was offered).
Promotion of the of the SMS My World 2015 survey
Promotion of the
overall survey and the options by which to take it
varied in the countries surveyed via SMS. In
Rwanda, My World 2015 worked with UNICEF, the
Nike Girl Hub project, and
Clarisse
Iribagiza (
@clairyce on Twitter),
the young, well-known CEO of a Rwanda mobile computing technology company
called
HeHe.
In
Yemen, the
poorest country on the Arab peninsula and home to
Ms Tawakkol Karman, an
internationally-renown journalist as well as a member of the U.N. High-Level
Panel on the Post-2015 Agenda Report, local partners led the promotional
campaign. The NGO
Y21Forum
distributed print ads, fliers, and radio ads (in addition to doing the
recording for the IVR aspect of the survey). My World partners in Yemen also
invested in billboards, additional fliers, and three short films shown on
Yemeni TV and posted to
YouTube.
Finally, a mobile theatre displaying the videos travelled to four of Yemen’s
main cities in five days to promote the survey (and all the local ways in which
it could be accessed: SMS, IVR, etc.) while customized media campaigns were
deployed in 5 governorates: Sana’a, Aden, Hodeida, Taiz and Ibb.
Implementation of the SMS My World 2015 survey
For most countries, the My World 2015 distributors relied on
GeoPoll to send out the initial SMS survey offers to respondents. In Yemen, My
World 2015 distributors worked directly with Y-Telecom, a mobile distributor
popular among Yemeni youth, and in Yemen, Rwanda, and India, SMS survey
outreach was coupled with the offer of an IVR (voice) version of the survey, to
broaden participation to include respondents who might be illiterate or fail to
own a mobile phone. The IVR approach is further covered in the next section of
the overview.
GeoPoll has sent
out the SMS survey to 13 million people in 15 countries. By early June 2012,
over 100 thousand
individuals had completed the survey via SMS from 15 countries.
The highest response
rates for the GeoPoll SMS version of the survey so far come from Ghana (43 thousand
votes), the United Republic of Tanzania (36 thousand votes), and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (15 thousand votes). The lowest response rates come Paraguay
(4 votes), Bangladesh (18 votes), and Colombia (28 votes via SMS). In total, GeoPoll SMS respondents cited better
education, better job opportunities, and better healthcare as their top priorities.
In
Yemen, where
My World 2015 partners with
Y-Telecom, to
which over 1.5 million Yemenis subscribe, and
MenaVAS,
a third party company that provides clients with business solutions in
developing countries, along with local NGOs and the United Nations Volunteers,
SMS response rate in real numbers was much higher than expected. Out of 3
million SMS invitations, sent out pro-bono by Y-Telecom, over
46 thousand individuals
responded and listed better job opportunities, an honest and responsive
government, and a better education as their top priorities. Better healthcare
came in fourth. These results are added to the 21 thousand pen-and-paper
surveys gathered from Governorates across Yemen and the over 100 thousand IVR
responses thus far received.
Results of the SMS My World 2015 survey
In total, over 400 thousand respondents had replied to My
World 2015 by SMS in early June 2014. Overwhelmingly, men replied more than
women (at a ratio of about 2:1). More
than half (about 60%) of all respondents were between the ages of 16 and 30 and
about 32% of all respondents claimed to have finished secondary school.
Top priorities include a better education, better job
opportunities, an honest and responsive government, and better health care.
Obvious problems in
the SMS survey distribution include the length of the survey, which leads
to a high dropout rate (exact
figures were not offered). Each texted question and response is followed up
with another texted question and response, which, given the number of
priorities respondents are asked to consider, might be tedious. Respondents
generally made it through the identification questions (age, gender, etc.), but
often dropped out before choosing six out of 16 priorities.
To encourage further
participation, mobile phone companies like Y-Telecom continue to send
reminder SMS messages to those that began the survey but then dropped out,
encouraging these potential respondents to continue the survey.
Another concern is
the strong gender imbalance (not unique to SMS but also found in the IVR
and biNu response rates, discussed next). Aside from Kyrgyzstan and Nicaragua, there
were no countries with over one thousand votes in which women were either more
or equally represented than men.
The reasons as to the causes of this gender imbalance remain
speculative, though a My World distributor cited the 2010 GSMA Report
Women
and Mobile: A Global Opportunity when stating that women across the globe
are 21% less likely than a man to own a mobile phone – and this discrepancy
increases to 23% less likely if the women live in Africa, 24% less likely if
they live in the Middle East, and 37% less likely if they live in Southeast
Asia. Reasons cited for this in the GSMA survey, and corroborated anecdotally
by the My World 2015 distributor, include: handsets are too expensive (42%), mobile
monthly service fees are too expensive (8%), and gender-specific issues such as
the idea that there is no need for a woman to own a mobile because everyone the
woman knows is local (20%), or because she has a landline (10%), or due to a woman’s
fear of technology or a lack of permission to own a mobile from the woman’s
husband or family.
Given women are less likely to own personal mobiles, it may
be that the one phone/one vote approach is not ideal for reaching this target
audience via SMS. However, rather than
risk having the same respondent reply several times via the same mobile phone, to address the SMS gender imbalance, My
World 2015 has increased its promotional gender targeting, using more female
celebrities and gender-specific advertising to encourage more female
participation.
