Deadline: Tuesday 18 May 2021 - Thursday 20 May 2021

Smartphone sensors (e.g., GPS, camera, accelerometer), apps, and wearables (e.g., smartwatches, fitness bracelets) allow researchers to collect rich behavioural data, potentially with less measurement error and lower respondent burden than self-reports through surveys. Passive mobile data collection (e.g., location tracking, call logs, browsing history) and respondents performing additional tasks on smartphones (e.g., taking pictures, scanning receipts) can augment or replace self-reports in surveys. However, there are multiple challenges to collecting these data: participant selectivity, (non)willingness to provide sensor data or perform additional tasks, privacy concerns and ethical issues, quality and usefulness of the data, and practical issues of implementation. This course will address the challenges by reviewing state-of-the-art practices of smartphone sensor, app, and wearables data collection, ranging from small-scale studies of hard-to-reach populations to large-scale studies to produce official statistics, and discuss design best-practices for this type of measurement.

More information can be found here: https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/training/show.php?article=11150