Design and Implementation of SMS Based Public Opinion Polling System
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Date
2010-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The collection, analysis, and interpretation of public opinion play invaluable role in the
development of socio-economic and political situations of a society.
Different techniques can be used to collect public opinion polls including personal interview,
voice call, Internet, post etc.
However, most of the techniques stated above have a combination of one or more the following
short comings: limited area coverage, high cost, difficulty of use, availability, homogeneous
social strata, very high response time etc.
On the contrary, the newly emerging and rapidly expanding mobile wireless technology enables
anytime anywhere communication. Recently, there is the high expansion in the use of SMS
technology, reduction in the cost of bulk SMS, and reduction in the cost of mobile subscription
fee (high penetration). These make the use of mobile phones to collect public opinion an optimal
solution and create an enabling environment for the widespread development of SMS bases
applications and services.
In this project work, we made use of the SMS technology to develop a SMS based Public
Opinion Polling System (SMSPPoll). The system uses a GSM modem attached to a computer to
send and receive messages to and from respondents. Since the GSM modem is considered as one
of the communication ports in the computer system, the technique utilize the I/O port APIs
provided by the .NET framework.
SMSPPoll is capable of composing questions, sending questions as SMS messages to
respondents, accepting SMS responses from respondents, summarizing poll results and
presenting the results in tabular and graphical formats. The application also enables to
print/export results as appropriate.
Keywords: Mobile phone based opinion polling; SMS based opinion polling
Description
Keywords
Mobile Phone Based Opinion Polling; SMS Based Opinion Polling