Collector
In the Collector phase, you reach out to people and collect their stories. You have the option to collect information online or face-to-face in story sharing sessions or interviews, either web-based or through using mobile devices. In this chapter we distinguish between the web and the app Collector.
The Collector can operate in 3 modes: Testing, Personal and Interviewer. Each of these modes has its own code that you can find online in the 'Inquiry details' tab of the inquiry you are working on.
There are three codes you can use for the app and web Collector. These codes are different from each other, so make sure you use the right one! Each inquiry has these three codes and the codes will stay the same throughout the whole process. Each inquiry has their own codes. To use the app collector, you can enter one these codes in the app and for the web collector you can add the code behind the url to access the web collector secure.sprockler.com/collector/thecode.
In brief the differences between the codes are (see for more detailed descriptions below):
The test code is only for testing the inquiry in the test phase. The responses to the test code will be marked as test.
The personal code is for sending the inquiry to one individual, for example by email.
The interviewer code is the code you need when going around with one device (tablet, phone or computer) to interview multiple people.
Testing mode allows testing the designed inquiry on the app before sending it out to the respondents. Testing responses will be marked as test and will not be included in the final results. We strongly advise you to test the inquiry before you send it out. You can test the inquiry yourself but we also advise you to compose a team to help you with this, so you can make sure the inquiry targets your topic of interest and that questions are not unnecessarily vague and are inspiring enough. The testing mode of our Collector is both for the app and the online version immediately available as soon as you start with designing your inquiry.
The personal mode allows individuals respondents to answer the inquiry and submit their responses. For example, if you want to invite individual respondents to answer an inquiry in their own time, you would use the Personal mode. It is possible to use the Personal to submit more than one story from one person. The Personal mode requires you to seal the inquiry before you can use it. The sealing of the inquiry is done in the Designer under the tab ‘Publication’. When you are done with designing or editing your inquiry, you can simply press ‘Seal’ and the Designer will provide you with a set of codes for the Personal and Interviewer mode. You can enter that code on your device or use the link to get to the inquiry, for more about that check the part further down on entering codes and getting your inquiry to work.
The interviewer mode allows for collecting stories from more than one respondent using the same device. Additionally, it allows including questions for the interviewer to provide additional information such as ‘What is the respondent’s gender?’ or ‘Was the respondent at ease?’. The Interviewer works just as the Personal mode in that it requires you to seal the inquiry after you have finished designing or editing the inquiry.