Who Is Willing to Use Audio and Voice Inputs in Smartphone Surveys, and Why?

Abstract

The ever-growing number of respondents completing web surveys via smartphones is paving the way for leveraging technological advances to improve respondents’ survey experience and, in turn, the quality of their answers. Smartphone surveys enable researchers to incorporate audio and voice features into web surveys, that is, having questions read aloud to respondents using pre-recorded audio files and collecting voice answers via the smartphone’s microphone. Moving from written to audio and voice communication channels might be associated with several benefits, such as humanizing the communication process between researchers and respondents. However, little is known about respondents’ willingness to undergo this change in communication channels. Replicating and extending earlier research, we examine the extent to which respondents are willing to use audio and voice channels in web surveys, the reasons for their (non)willingness, and respondent characteristics associated with (non)willingness. The results of a web survey conducted in a nonprobability online panel in Germany ( N = 2146) reveal that more than 50% of respondents would be willing to have the questions read aloud (audio channel) and about 40% would also be willing to give answers via voice input (voice channel). While respondents mostly name a general openness to new technologies for their willingness, they mostly name preference for written communication for their nonwillingness. Finally, audio and voice channels in smartphone surveys appeal primarily to frequent and competent smartphone users as well as younger and tech-savvy respondents.

Investigating respondents’ willingness to participate in video-based web surveys

“…In order to draw more robust conclusions and to be able to refer our findings to the general population, we recommend using data from probability-based samples instead. As shown by previous research, willingness for new communication forms may highly depend on the respective sample (see, for example, Höhne, 2023; Lenzner & Höhne, 2022; Revilla et al, 2018). We also argued that video-based web surveys may be well suited for respondents with literacy issues and low competence in the language of the web survey.…”

“…The non-substantive answer options ‘don’t know how this works’ and 6 ‘don’t have a device with camera and microphone’ are excluded from the regression analyses. We use the following independent variables that were suggested by previous research to be associated with respondents’ willingness (Höhne, 2023; Lenzner & Höhne, 2022; Revilla et al, 2018): believe technology facilitates communication (7 ascending options), personality traits in terms of openness (19 ascending options), conscientiousness (19 ascending options), extraversion (19 ascending options), agreeableness (19 ascending options), and neuroticism (19 ascending options) 5 , and survey evaluation in terms of interest (7 ascending options), difficulty (7 ascending options), and topic sensitivity (7 ascending options). In addition, we control for the following variables: age (continuous), female (1 = ‘yes’), education with low as reference: medium (1 = ‘yes’) and high (1 = ‘yes’), and smartphone use in this survey (1 = ‘yes’).…”

“…Taking a look at the survey literature, it is observable that there is a variety of studies dealing with respondents' willingness to share digital data and/or to engage in additional tasks, such as downloading apps, share Global Positioning System (GPS) data, and take photos or scan barcodes (see, for example, Keusch et al, 2019;Revilla et al, 2019;Wenz et al, 2019). There are also a few studies investigating respondents' willingness for audio and voice communication forms (Höhne, 2023;Lenzner & Höhne, 2022;Revilla et al, 2018). They reveal that between 25% and 52% of respondents are willing to use audio communication forms (having the questions read aloud) and between 16% and 54% of respondents are willing to use voice communication forms (providing oral answers via voice input).…”

A standard for (qualitative) diary studies: MeTag app and MeTag analyzer

“…The possibility to do audio-entries is a significant advantage when thinking of less literate samples. However, researchers should consider that participants do not necessarily always evaluate the potential for doing audio as more positive (primarily because of privacy reasons; see Lenzner & Höhne, 2022). 4.…”

“…Since the app is in both app stores, it is easy to install and does not require any changes in the smartphone settings. The possibility to do audio-entries is a significant advantage when thinking of less literate samples. However, researchers should consider that participants do not necessarily always evaluate the potential for doing audio as more positive (primarily because of privacy reasons; see Lenzner & Höhne, 2022). The opportunity to receive push notifications allows the researcher to contact and remind participants since this is a crucial part of (media) diary studies.…”