During the data collection, i.e. while the SMS of the main corpus were collected, the informants were also asked to fill in a questionnaire, responding to questions about their personal data such as age, sex etc., but also about their use of mobile phones and the new media. The same questions were asked in the second call (see last section in this document).
The information thus collected is linked to the SMS sent by the respective informants, however, there is no way of knowing who this person is since no names, phone numbers or other personal information was collected and the individual SMS got stripped off any personal information.
The questionnaire was available to the participants throughout the collections. It was thus possible to send the information in more than once. In cases where we received more than one questionnaire for one person, we only considered the last one, assuming that people wanted to correct the information provided. The same procedure was applied for people who participated in the first and the second collection. In this case, the information from the second collection was considered. It is thus possible that somebody was a student during the first collection but now figures as a professional, because he graduated in the meantime.
The questionnaires were available in four languages ( German, French, Italian, Romansh). Additionally to what you see in the questionnaires presented here, there was a header with our logo as well as a "send"-button. Please keep in mind that what you see for Italian and Romansh is the questionnaire used for the second collection (see last section in this document).
If you are interested in the exact wording of the questions, please check the documents in the original questionnaires above.
In this documentation, only questions that can be queried in the corpus are documented. In the original questionnaire there were more questions with open text fields that were only used for internal evaluation.
Sex is given as F (female), M (male) or n/a (not answered)
Age The age is given as a number for the age of the person at the moment they filled in the form.
Mother tongue(s) The mother tongue(s) as they were given. More than one option possible. It was possible to list other languages than the ones offered as a selection (Standard German, French, Italian, Romansh and Swissgerman Dialect). If the informants typed in other languges, they get listed in the person data but not in the Frequency Distribution.
Other languages spoken Other languages spoken at home and in public. For both fields, more than one options are possible. It was possible to list other languages than the ones offered as a selection (Standard German, French, Italian, Romansh and Swissgerman Dialect). If the informants typed in other languges, they get listed in the person data but not in the Frequency Distribution.
Education The informants' answers were interpreted as follows:
Occupation The informants' answers were interpreted as follows:
Home/work postcode/address Postcode where the informant lives or works respectively. In the person information, you can click on the number to get a map.
SMS Use in years The informant was asked, for how many years he has been using SMS. A selection was presented:
SMS sent per week The informant was asked, how many SMS he sends out in an average week. A selection was presented:
Use of T9 The informant was asked whether he uses his mobile phone's automatic text recognition T9. Options were yes or no.
The informant was asked whether he uses any of these media communication forms: email, chat, forum. Possible answers were:
Sending SMS from Web The informant was asked whether he sends SMS from the Web. Possible answers were:
Recipients The informant was asked whom his SMS were addressed to. Possible answers:
The second collection took place nearly two years after the first one and was set up for the special needs of research in Italian and Romansh. Accordingly, the questionnaire was adjusted slightly to adjust to the needs of this user group but also to cover the quick technical development. The following was changed: For all questions concerning languages (e.g. mothertongue), the option Italian dialect ("dialetto della Svizzera italiana") was added. An additional profession was included: farming or forestry ("agricoltura e foreste") An additional question about mobile phone use was added: do you use a smartphone? ("Si serve di uno smartphone (iPhone o simili)?"). Possible answers were yes and no, but it was also possible to leave the question empty. When working with the corpus, it is imperative to realize that these questions were only asked during the second collection. Thus, the percentage of people, who consider the Italian dialect as their mother tongue, cannot be calculated by setting the total number of participants as 100%. Instead, the number of participants of the second collection has to be taken as 100%. The same goes for smarphones etc.