What is My World 2015? My World and mobiles - post 2 of 6

My World 2015 is a global survey of individuals’ priorities. When taking the survey, individuals can choose up to 6 out of 17 possible priorities – the 17^th of which asks the individual to suggest a priority not found in the previous 16 – that are most important to the individual and his or her family.

Launched in December 2012 by The UN Development Program (UNDP), the UN Millennium Campaign, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the World Wide Web Foundation in collaboration with civil society organizations and influential individuals throughout the world, the My World 2015 survey aims to collect citizen feedback on existing Millennium Development Goals, a set of developmental goals set up by the United Nations that will reach their expiration date at the end of this year, as well as discover and catalogue new potential goals for a development framework to be set up post-2015.

The My World 2015 survey has been and is currently still distributed via live events and on-the-ground activities led by more than 700 grassroots organizations along with non-governmental organizations and civil society actors, via online activities directing potential respondents to a central website, and through mobile phones.

The real-time results of the survey are shared with the public as well as the United Nations High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (HLP), the UN Secretary-General, and other leaders involved in determining the post-2015 development agenda.

What is the goal of the My World 2015 survey?

My World 2015 results, covering more than 2 million individual responses from people in over 180 countries as of June 2014, will feed into the political process determining the post-2015 global development agenda while also highlighting how global citizens can and perhaps should be more involved in defining government policies and priorities.

In particular, the survey intends to explore how citizens can be consulted on issues important to them and thus provide policy decision-makers with actionable and credible citizen feedback in a timely manner.

Initial approach to My World 2015 as a whole

My World 2015 attempts to harness the power of a type of ‘big data’ in the form of information voluntarily contributed by individuals from around the world, and add this to representative and statistically accurate traditional data from census and household surveys run by governments and their National Statistical Offices.

To make this possible, it was important to first determine what citizens would be asked as well as how the survey could be most efficiently and effectively promoted and distributed.

What are some of the tradeoffs between academically rigorous vs. ‘big’ data when it comes to My World 2015 results?

The balance in big data collection is, among other things, often one of accuracy versus precision. Data that is useful but is also academically rigorous is not always easy (or cost-efficient) to achieve. 

Where one-off but statistically valid surveys on specific issues are often accurate, the surveys are not always cost-efficient or easily reproducible, and the results are not always repeatable. Plus these academically rigorous surveys are run, in some cases, every few years, and thus do not always provide recent (or immediately actionable) data.

For policy decision-makers interested in making data-driven and politically viable policy decisions, it can be difficult to react to what is essentially a time-sensitive snapshot of the public with regard to a set of pre-determined concerns. For example, expensive and time-consuming traditional household surveys, while an important source of socio-economic data, are not always large enough or specific enough in, say, poor or under-represented countries, to provide policy-makers with the information they need to make pressing policy decisions – or to convince the public and important politicians and influencers about the importance of such decisions.

Alternatively, less statistically valid and methodologically accurate surveys collected through campaigns like My World 2015 are constantly being reproduced, repeated, updated, and provide immediate and actionable insight into the current concerns and priorities of a proactive (if not representative) group of citizens. This could mean the more politically salient results will be easier to convey to citizens, policy-makers, politicians, and influencers. Yet a major tradeoff with such a survey is a distinct lack of clear representative samples of the relevant populations. As of January 2013, the My World survey results as of were representative enough to be statistically valid in only 8 out of the 180+ countries surveyed.

How were the My World 2015 priorities determined?

To determine the 16 priorities of the My World 2015 Survey (plus the 17^th fill-in-the-blank ‘name a priority we did not’ option), existing research, household surveys, and the Millennium Development Goals were gathered and classified into 15 thematic groups by the UN Millennium Campaign (UNMC).

In addition, a supplementary mobile survey given to more than 150 thousand young people in Uganda by UNICEF Uganda asked “What's the most important problem u want the government to solve to make life better for you and your family. Tell us only one thing.” The 17 000 responses received (a response rate of about 9%) were classified according to the UNMC’s 15 thematic areas with a 96% match rate.

Several evaluations and consultations with experts in the field of development and the Millennium Development Goals followed, and the original 15 thematic groups became 16 categories plus the option for survey-takers to add a priority if they so choose.

To ensure that the data can be disaggregated according to gender, age, etc., respondents are asked to identify their age, gender, location, and education level after or before filling out the survey.

How is the My World 2015 survey overall promoted and distributed?

As noted earlier, those who want to take the My World survey are invited to do so via the website, SMS, interactive voice response (IVR), and pen-and-paper.  Each distribution option had and still has different yet complementary outreach and promotional approaches, customized per country and region as well as available networks and partners.

Examples per country can be found in the My World 2015 blog. The most successful promotions included on-the-ground partners and local influencers. In Nigeria, for example, the Nigerian government mobilized youth to go out and distribute the survey. Over 700 grassroots partners in countries from Indonesia to Argentina carried pen-and-pencil versions of the survey to community events, school fairs, and more to collect in-person responses from those present. A celebrity Tweet to the website resulted in a huge surge of young female respondents from Latin America.

Overall, in promoting the survey, My World 2015 distributors aim to ensure that the survey is non-exclusive and as representative as possible. For example, the survey can be filled out up to six times from the same computer – allowing for up to 6 family members that share a computer to each have a voice. However, only one person can fill out each SMS survey, to ensure that a single mobile phone owner does not fill out the survey more than once via text. Recognizing that several individuals, particularly in developing countries, sometimes share mobile phones, My World 2015 also offered a toll-free interactive voice response (IVR) number in several countries. IVR options available in many of the local languages allowed as many individuals as desired to phone in (from the same phone if necessary) and respond to the survey questions.

In this overview, the focus is more on the distribution of the survey via mobile in developing countries, so we will look further into the approaches used in this context. However, it’s worth a read on the My World blog to learn about how the overall aims and goals of the survey along with available resources helped distributors determine the best way to get the survey out – whether high-tech, low-tech, or no-tech.

What are the results of My World 2015 so far?

Most results depend on how the data is sliced (by location, gender, education, age group, and the method by which the survey was received, etc.). However, clear overall trends so far include an emphasis on education and healthcare followed by a desire for an honest and responsive government.

Respondents with higher levels of education tend to rank protection from violence more highly overall (though still not above education and healthcare). Those from countries that score higher on the Human Development Index value action with regard to climate change more than other respondents (though again, not more than education and better healthcare). Those voting via a mobile application (biNu, covered later) put phone and Internet access among their top ten global priorities. Overall SMS respondents tend to value better job opportunities more than those responding via the web or pen-and-paper ballots.

For more on current My World results, click here. Below is a quick screen shot from June 2014 data. 

Future plans for My World 2015

As noted, the My World 2015 survey aims to not only categorize global priorities for policy-makers at all levels, it also hopes to demonstrate that citizen consultation on policy priorities can be done in a cost-effective and timely way. The survey continues now, with new approaches to outreach under continuous iterative development. My World 2015 hopes to continue to support policy decision-making post-2015.