Quick-Testing Surveys for Mobile
If you are not testing all of your surveys for how they function on mobile, you absolutely should be. Almost half of respondents in our most recent U.S. census-rep survey completed the survey on mobile devices. This included 30% who completed it on phones, and 17% who completed it on tablets.
Here is a quick way to test whether your survey is effectively adapting to mobile devices:
- Use the developer tools in your internet browser to simulate how the survey will look on a whole variety of mobile devices.
For example, in Chrome you can click on the menu icon, then click on More Tools, and then Developer Tools. You can choose from among 46 different mobile devices to simulate, including multiple versions of iPhones, iPads, Samsung, HTC, BlackBerry, Kindle, etc. If your survey looks great in simulation mode, chances are it will look great to respondents who have these devices. For example, this shows a simulation in Chrome of how our demo survey about grid questions looks on an iPhone 6:
Of course simulation modes are not perfect. That’s why, in addition, we always physically test on multiple types of phones and tablets. We also test on multiple browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome, at a minimum.
Don’t let mobile mania scare you. With the right tools, it is easy to track, test, and adapt to technological shifts without revamping your entire research effort from scratch.
