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Primary supervisor

Tom Bartindale

Co-supervisors


Online surveys are a widely used form of data collection in many fields. Rapid deployment of large scale surveys is now commonplace using online tools such as SurveyMonkey. These tools however are constrained in a number of ways:

- Participants are required to interact with the survey through a custom website or app.

- In most cases, the entire survey has to be completed in one session.

- There are no easy ways to seamlessly follow up with participants at a later date.

This project explores how we can deploy surveys using a conversation bot to mediate surveys over existing social media channels (e.g. WeChat), that could overcome these challenges and support scalable, longitudinal data collection.

It will focus on mental health in the student population as a case study, which will require considerations into the ethical, privacy and security constraints around sensitive data collected through social media. 

Aim/outline

To develop workflows (and supporting technology) to deploy large-scale surveys using social media.

Required knowledge

Good communication skills, preferably with experience in qualitative methods such as interviewing or surveys.

Ability to develop bot applications (i.e. some programming or design experience)