A cheap hand held gadget for use in research?

May 20, 2007 12:10 AM

Our research study requires subjects to respond to surveys administered at random intervals over the course of several months. We'll need to distribute some sort of hand held device. What's cheap, programmable, and mobile?

Surveys will be issued roughly three times per day and consist of 20 or so text only multiple choice questions.

Here's a more detailed rundown of our requirements:
- On board memory capable of storing two months' data
- Method to transfer recorded data onto a lab computer
- Battery life of at least 12 hours (idle)
- Relatively easy to acquire (<100 units)
- Priced under $100 (the cheaper, the better)
- Programmable (please, no expensive SDK or contracts)
- Able to alert subjects it's survey time (sound, light, etc.)

I've looked into palmtops, but the entry level Palm, the Z22, costs $100 and offers far more functionality than we require. Older Palm handhelds often sell between $20 and $50 on eBay. They're enticing, but risky, as I don't know that we could find enough of any one model. How difficult is software development for Palm? Will applications that run on PalmOS 3.x also run on PalmOS 4.x? Is Palm the only game in town?

Thanks in advance for your help. It's appreciated.

posted by nilihm to technology (11 comments total)

My instinct would be to use the text-messaging features on cell phones. You wouldn't even have to buy any equipment, just figure out the software side (which doesn't seem too difficult). Give them an allowance for extra charges maybe.
posted by alexei at 12:53 AM on May 20, 2007

I had a Nokia 1108 super-basic mobile phone in Indonesia and it had a loud alarm, went a week on one charge, and was ridiculously easy to use - I actually had to answer a bunch of survey questions (name, age, passport number, address, etc) when registering my phone via SMS, and it worked fine - they'd give me text prompts, I'd text a response to a number, and one second later, I got a confirmation and a new question.

I paid about $50 for it, and it worked perfectly for a year, surviving being dropped in the mud, smashed on the floor, and multiple direct impacts to the screen. A real trooper. Don't know about the SDK, though, or how programmable it is, but its inbox held about 80 text messages.
posted by mdonley at 3:45 AM on May 20, 2007

Also, you can buy unlocked, totally-legit mobile phones that will work here in the States in Mexico at any cell phone shop. In a bigger city like Tijuana (business trip!) you could probably find as many of one model as you needed, or you could just contact Nokia directly - even paying retail, most basic phones in the developing world are priced for the market and are below $100.
posted by mdonley at 3:50 AM on May 20, 2007

erm ... if your subjects already have a phone ... use an outbound IVR solution ... You call them, give them the recorded set of questions and they hit 1,2,3,or 4 for the answer. Then next question. You could give them a phone if they don't already have one.
posted by jannw at 6:58 AM on May 20, 2007

If you decide to go the PalmOS route, you may be able to use ESP to administer your questionnaires. It is free, and runs on most (if not all) recent versions of PalmOS.
posted by i love cheese at 7:19 AM on May 20, 2007

Palm programming is basically C. with a Palm API that replaces pointers with structures that doubly-indirect memory access. So any C coder can code on the Palm, and C code can be ported to it without terrible effort.
posted by orthogonality at 8:50 AM on May 20, 2007

You could host a PHP-based XHTML questionnaire and send people links to this by SMS. Most new phones have XHTML browsers and support GPRS. In the UK, these are available pre-pay for about £20 with some free credit.

Even at that, most people here own phones which support this - I don't know how different that is in the US but it seems the easiest way from my perspective.

You could even reimburse then for their data use if they use their own phones - most bills clearly indicate these costs and they shouldn't be too high if you avoid heavy graphics in your survey pages..
posted by dcbarker at 1:13 PM on May 20, 2007

That's a good idea, but my own phone cannot handle web browsing. It'd be too troublesome to equip subjects with new phones and plans (as required).
posted by nilihm at 4:57 PM on May 21, 2007

Oh, sorry, I didn't notice what you wrote about pre-pay. I'll have to look into that, thanks.
posted by nilihm at 4:58 PM on May 21, 2007

Well, outbound IVR for a project of this magnitude costs approximately four times our budget. We will go with new Palm PDAs for their warrantee and resale value.

Thanks to all of you for your help.
posted by nilihm at 7:33 PM on May 27, 2007

In hindsight, ESP is precisely what we needed. Just perfect.
posted by nilihm at 7:20 PM on July 10, 2007