Measuring needs and preferences

Finding out how many citizens have which needs, and what their preferences are between alternative options (e.g. through surveys, opinion polls, preferenda).

• Some consultations set out to find what particular groups of people need.
• Others try to find out what preferences people have between different options.
• In either case, apart from discussion systems, we often use surveys and votes to quantify the needs or preferences.
• Computers can help send out surveys, collect the results, and analyse them. They can also be used to run a quick vote in a meeting, or by subtle analysis of preferences, find underlying consensus between oponents.

E-polling/E-voting

Here we are not talking about voting for representatives, but choosing options on issues.

• voting software can help analyse votes
  • Deborda
• voting hardware can collect votes from dozens or thousands of people at once
  • wireless voting systems: Xtol, vPad
  • text message (SMS) voting

Online surveys

Online survey cycle

• • an online survey is designed to replace traditional paper questionnaires.
  • Survey example 1: mobile phone Internet service, [http://www.e-consultation.org/phpsurveyor/index.php?sid=1 example 2: various types of survey question