Optimal Data Entry Designs in Mobile Web Surveys for Older Adults

• Published in: Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. Acceptance, Communication and Participation pp. 335 - 354
• Main Authors: Olmsted-Hawala, Erica, Nichols, Elizabeth, Falcone, Brian, Figueroa, Ivonne J., Antoun, Christopher, Wang, Lin
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Currency inputs; Drop-downs; Mobile guidelines; Mobile navigation controls; Mobile survey design; Older adults
• ISBN: 3319920332; 9783319920337
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-92034-4_26

Growing numbers of people are using their mobile phones to respond to online surveys. As a result, survey designers face the challenge of displaying questions and their response options and navigation elements on small smartphone screens in a way that encourages survey completion. The purpose of the present study was to conduct a series of systematic assessments of how older adults using smartphones interact with different user-interface features in online surveys. This paper shares results of three different experiments. Experiment 1 compares different ways of displaying choose-one response options. Experiment 2 compares different ways of displaying numeric entry boxes, specifically ones used to collect currency information (e.g., prices, costs, salaries). Experiment 3 tests whether forward and backward navigational buttons on a smartphone survey should be labeled with words (previous, next) or simply indicated with arrow icons (<, >). Results indicate that certain features such as picker-boxes that appear at the bottom of the screen (iOS devices), fixed formatting of numeric-entry boxes, and icon navigation buttons were problematic. They either had negative impacts on performance (response times and/or accuracy) or only a small percentage of participants preferred these design features when asked to compare them to the other features.