Eszter Hargittai explains how cellphone text messages can be used for social-science research in her new book.
Text messages can be a powerful survey tool even if they are typed on cellphones and are short and grammatically iffy, says Ms. Hargittai, an associate professor of communications studies at Northwestern University, in Research Confidential: Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have (University of Michigan Press), which she edited.
She and a graduate student asked 60 students at the University of Illinois at Chicago to text them every hour with information on what they were doing, who they were with, and what sorts of digital media they were using.
[Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education]
