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.

Examples:

1. mobile phone Internet service
2. various types of survey question

Online survey cycle:

1. Use survey and question editors to design the survey
2. Run the survey
3. View the results, or export them for more thorough statistical analysis