The Swiss Election Study (Selects) has been investigating the electoral behaviour of Swiss citizens in national elections since 1995. The project sheds light on the dynamics of citizens’ opinion formation as well as on the determinants of their political participation and vote choice for a specific candidate or party. Due to the increasing use of smartphones in the Swiss population and a general decline in survey participation, Selects is incorporating a mobile web survey addressing innovative new research questions (conducted via the Civique.org data collection platform) alongside its main 2019 survey. This research is a collaboration between researchers at FORS, the University of Lausanne, and EPFL-IDIAP.

The project will investigate how smartphones can be used in survey research as a replacement to traditional methods of data collection, like interviews or conventional online surveys, to make it easier and more fun for people to take part in scientific research. Research participants can use their smartphones either to fill in conventional online questionnaires on their web browser, or to complete shorter questionnaire modules (called ‘Challenges’) via the Civique app. Civique is a multimodal data collection platform, meaning research participants can also choose to provide other forms of data that could either substitute or supplement traditional survey measures (e.g. photographs, videos, sensor data). As well as contributing to the development of innovative tools for the study of election campaigns, the project will contribute to a broader effort in the social sciences and social computing aimed at developing and exploiting technologies that are optimally adapted to human behaviour, engaging to use, and which motivate the sharing of information for research purposes.

>>> for more information see the website for the participants