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A few months ago, we became the largest crowdsourced journalism project in Latvia to date. We reached 2% of the general population and gathered unique data. However, to generate the data and launch the survey we had to program, design and test the system for weeks and invest several thousand dollars in it.
The experience made us feel that there must be another way for journalists, and it inspired something novel and powerful ... We call it MapSurvey!
LAUNCH A CROWDSOURCED SURVEY IN 1 MINUTE
To create and launch a crowdsourced survey in just 1 minute, you'll simply need to do the following:
- Create a form -- what information you want to receive
- Embed the survey in your website
- Respondents give their answers, and they appear in a nice, map-based infographic!
You can even export an Excel spreadsheet with every respondent's e-mail and answers for further communication. The technology has been developed by the SocMap.com team in partnership with re:Baltica investigative journalism center. The tool is extremely simple, visually appealing, and you can embed it in any media site or blog.
WHAT'S IT COST TO SEND ONE KID TO SCHOOL?
In Latvia, education is supposedly free. We wanted to examine whether it really is. We created a MapSurvey form and placed it in one of the largest media websites in Latvia, TVNET. Within two weeks, the form was viewed by more than 20,000 people, over 1,400 of which participated in the survey and answered 10 questions about which school their kids will be going to and what funds are required to send a child to school. The results were automatically collected and presented in a map infographic.
Journalists are now crunching all the data -- expenses in different regions and schools, correlation with student age, etc. It will be deep data that has never been analyzed prior to our research and will reveal many interesting facts about free education in Latvia. But today we can give you the preliminary results of what it costs to send one kid to school:
- $100 - $300 (65% respondents)
- less than $100 (19% respondents)
- more than $300 (16% respondents)
Resources:
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