New Zealand's Youth Health & Wellbeing Survey

University of Auckland

Type: Online survey (large scale)

In 2000 a researcher needed to survey a large number of students throughout New Zealand, and was ready to explore new technologies to be more effective. Together with Stream Interactive a plan was hatched and the digital world began. Since then the Stream SURVEY system has been used to run an "online" offline survey.... He's back now for the fourth time, and times have certainly changed...

The Details

In 2000 a researcher on behalf of the University of Auckland was seeking to survey around 10,000 teenagers to establish a gauge on the well being of this sector of our society. This included delivery of a comprehensive survey, with data collection carried into an intensive analytics programme. From this observations were made and conclusions drawn, with the information then widely disseminated through various reports and publications.

Initially a web based solution was not viable, and Stream Interactive created a custom solution based on CD-Rom technology which was delivered using laptop computers. Answers were saved to TXT files which were finally imported to a central system for analysis.

In 2007 the survey was repeated and this began to establish a trending monitor on the status of the health of New Zealand's youth. This time however the internet had become a realistic tool to consider. The solution saw a groundbreaking approach where small tablets, which at that time were extremely novel items, were used by students to do the survey. The students gathered into the school halls, up to 100 at a time, and working with a stylus pen gave their answers through the web page interface. As the solution included audio and was multi-lingual, all students were able to complete the process. This was achieved by setting up private sub-networks within the schools halls, not connected to the public internet. These sub-networks used a laptop as a web server, with the tablets connecting over a wireless network. The web server laptop had full services running, including MS SQL Server and IIS to collect and store the information in a powerful manner.

On completion of the survey delivery, an administrator would then connect the web server laptop to the public internet network and trigger Web Service calls to automatically push the response data back to a central website, and also to collect the next set of school and student information which would drive the next survey set at the next school.

In summary, the survey was run over 1000 randomly selected schools, with roughly 100 students from each school participating.

The survey was repeated once more in 2011. The same broad technical approach was used, however this time the survey system used was the .NET technology base now known as Stream's SURVEY. This included various online admin enhancements, and various modifications to better support the larger tablets now available.

Now in 2017 there is the chance to repeat the survey, in a similar fashion, although the technology environment is now available is greatly improved.

The Solution

SURVEY

streamSWEET SURVEY is at the heart of this solution. The SURVEY System comes integral with the Content Management System, which was included in the project.

In each previous case challenges existed in delivering the survey. At a technical level bandwidth was either too small or non-existent, laptops were a big overhead, tablets didn't have enough power and web based technology was still relatively new.

The actual survey solution coped very well, supporting a survey with around 1,000 questions broken into about 10 sections, branching logic, many question types, multiple languages, full audio support, and with all data available for export to specialised analytics software.

In achieving this Stream Interactive were flexible, and able to develop a series of enhancements and customisations to meet the survey delivery requirements. This included various levels of offline support, with online tools then used to move data to a centralised management point.

This year it is intended that the system will work directly online, with modifications now focusing on extended data security, anonymity of respondents, and the creation of new question types not used before. The core system is geared to be run fully online, so the intent is to use wifi, mobile networks and tablets, rather than laptops or semi-offline systems.

Stream Interactive thrive on the challenge of creating new systems that meet their customers needs, and in this case we are happy that the customer keeps coming back.

In the media

The Youth Survey has become an important barometer on the state of New Zealand's youth. The outcomes have been publicly reported and are used to shape strategic policy choices that affect this sector. Following are links to a few of the articles that have been published.

The 10 things our girls need most
Steve Biddulph - NZ Herald

Youth survey shows life for young New Zealanders improving
beehive.govt.nz
The Official website of the NZ Government

Youth’12 - survey conducted in 2012
Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences

Youth’07 – survey conducted in 2007
Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences

Youth 2000 - survey conducted in 2001
Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences

Social services call on Government to support crucial youth health survey
Emily Spink - Stuff