The rapid and massive dissemination of mobile phones in the developing world is creating new opportunities for the discipline of survey research. The World Bank is interested in leveraging mobile phone technology as a means of direct communication with poor households in the developing world in order to gather rapid feedback on the impact of economic crises and other events on the economy of such households. The World Bank commissioned Gallup to conduct the Listening to LAC (L2L) pilot program, a research project aimed at testing the feasibility of mobile phone technology as a way of data collection for conducting quick turnaround, self-administered, longitudinal surveys among households in Peru and Honduras. The project used face-to-face interviews as its benchmark, and included Short Message Service (SMS), Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI) as test methods of data collection. The pilot was designed in a way that allowed testing the response rates and the quality of data, while also providing information on the cost of collecting data using mobile phones. Researchers also evaluated if providing incentives affected panel attrition rates. The Honduras design was a test-retest design, which is closely related to the difference-in-difference methodology of experimental evaluation. The random stratified multistage sampling technique was used to select a nationally representative sample of 1,500 households. During the initial face-to-face interviews, researchers gathered information on the socio-economic characteristics of households and recruited participants for follow-up research. Questions wording was the same in all modes of data collection. In Honduras, after the initial face-to-face interviews, respondents were exposed to the remaining three methodologies according to a randomized scheme (three rotations, one methodology per week). Panelists in Honduras were surveyed for four and a half months, starting in February 2012.
