| 摘要 |
Systems and methods are disclosed for conducting surveys of panelists via mobile devices without requiring persistent network connectivity with the mobile devices. A survey application is downloaded to a user's processor-based device, and executes locally on the device. A survey definition file is generated that specifies various information defining a given survey, such as specific questions to be asked, etc. The survey definition file is downloaded to the user's device. Once downloaded to the user's processor-based device, the survey definition file is interpreted by the survey application executing on the user's processor-based device in order to present a user interface on the user's processor-based device with which a user can interact to take the survey, as defined by the downloaded survey definition file. The survey definition file may be generated by a tool as a result of processing a predefined survey definition file. |
| 主权项 |
1. A method for conducting a survey comprising:
generating a survey definition file that is downloadable to a user's processor-based device for interpretation by a survey application executing on the processor-based device to conduct a survey of a user of the processor-based device, wherein said generating comprises: receiving, as input to a definition processing tool, a predefined survey definition file; and processing, by the definition processing tool, the received predefined survey definition file to generate the survey definition file for download to the user's processor-based device; wherein said processing comprises: removing certain information from the received predefined survey definition file; wherein said removing comprises: removing unused question variables, variables describing features not used in a downloaded survey, logic and/or scripting not supported on the processor-based device, formatting instructions and/or tags not required for a non-browser based survey, legacy variables from an earlier version of an authoring tool used to create the predefined survey definition file, survey variables not supported by the survey application on the processor-based device, and variable setting scripts; downloading from a server device, via a communication network, the survey definition file to the processor-based device; and receiving from the processor-based device, via the communication network, at a server device response data reflecting the user's input to the processor-based device for the survey, responsive to completion of the survey by the user, determining by the survey application whether the processor-based device is communicatively connected to the communication network; and when determined by the survey application that the processor-based device is not communicatively connected to the communication network, periodically checking by the survey application whether the processor-based device is communicatively connected to the communication network, and when determined by the survey application that the processor-based device is communicatively connected to the communication network, uploading the response data from the processor-based device to the server device. |
