"What mobile phone have you got?" survey of FE students

Today, I decided to conduct an impromptu survey.  It is part of a bigger 'project' which I've started in the last couple of weeks about using iPod, iPhone & iPad Apps for education (more of that in future posts).  I wanted to have a quick overview of which mobile phones students used so I spent the afternoon ( about 2.5 hrs) working on the enquiry desk on the 2nd floor of the LRC.  Whenever I student came to book a computer, I asked them what mobile phone they had.  It was deliberately unstructured and I definitely wanted to ask just one question to see what response I got.  It is easy to ask students one question and everyone that I asked was helpful and interested in why I was asking.  I made the last minute decision to note down whether the respondent was male or female.  This is a bit of a contentious issue with me as I'm reluctant to take on board that there maybe a gender factor involved (part of the bigger project again) but the results are interesting.

The results were as follows:

126 students were asked

“What mobile phone have you got”?

17 (5F 12M ) iPhone (12 4s 5 3Gs)

31 (26F 5M) Blackberry

9 (5F 4M) HTC

22 (15F 7M) Nokia

9 (6F 3M) LG

9 (6F 3M) Sony E

22 (14F 8M) Samsung

7(3F 4M ) Other

It was a random sample which turned out to include more female students than male students.

Blackberries were the most popular (in conversations this was because they were reasonably affordable) especially with girls (which might be because they have a keyboard that requires more nimble fingers)

iPhones were more popular with male students but some female students said, unprompted, that they would definitely like an iPhone whereas those with iPhones showed no interest in any other make or model.

The next stage is to survey more students at different times / days.  To try to find out whether the course that they are studying makes a difference i.e. if you are studying a computing / media / games design course then you have a different phone than if you are studying health and care for example

Also to ask whether they have an iPod Touch or would like to use one as part of their course.