Detailed assessment of pilot study

To conduct a tracker of this kind, online research is the best option. The pilot survey also concluded that the members of online panels use the internet more often than the internet users in general. Out of the total online respondents surveyed, 93% of them use internet at least once a day while only 74% to 76% of respondents from the other two methods of data collection use internet at the same level. The number of low frequency internet users is so meagre that there is a likelihood of the conclusions becoming inaccurate. The amount of downloading done by high frequency internet users may be high, so a correction in this regard is necessary to achieve an unbiased result of the application of solus online methodology.

Across all the three methodologies, 50% of the internet users using internet once a day, admit file downloading/sharing, 17% of internet users using internet 1 to 6 times a week and only 5% of the users of internet using less than once a week admit file downloading /sharing. Hence the best way to reach the apt conclusion is to adopt a mixed methodology. So there must be provision for a face to face survey providing data for less frequent users and for an online survey providing data for frequent online users. It is not possible to get the anticipated result with the 25 minutes questionnaire which has an omnibus nature. The omnibus feature of the pilot would be lost if majority of the questionnaire is about illegal activity. Hence it becomes necessary to have an ad-hoc survey to administer the tracker. How to minimize the chances of respondents failing to admit illegal activities must be the prime consideration of the ad-hoc survey.

Data collection
It has already been proved by the Pilot that a more honest response would be available in the absence of an interviewer rather than interviewer directed questions. To collect data about file sharing, the pilot project recommends a self completion methodology element for the face to face tracker. For CAPI (Common Application Programming Interface), the respondents who are proficient with key board can use laptops which contain the questionnaire and the face to face element should be handled through a paper questionnaire. The less frequent internet users would find the paper questionnaire more comfortable. It is to be noted that the self completion element should not form the major part of the questionnaire otherwise the respondents would be spending much time on reading and answering a number of questions.

Questionnaire – Generic Construction
The tracker being an ad-hoc survey, careful steps should be taken to collect honest reply from the respondents by encouraging them to give true responses with regard to illegal activity. To minimize the affect of these questions, at the beginning of the questionnaire, general questions regarding the technology used in the household etc could be included. Again before asking specific questions about peer-to peer group activity, it is always better to ask, first the questions with regard to the recent visit to websites. Only at the end of the interview the question about illegal activity should be placed. The aim should be to figure out the volume of illegal activity. The behavioural questions should be followed by questions about attitude and finally by questions about illegal downloading and file sharing. Some influence could be seen it attitude questions are asked prior to behavioural questions.

Specific questions
To infer the volume of illegal activity, Peer review recommends different approach for different category of downloading /file sharing. The existing questions should be split to cover separately both downloading and file sharing. The respondents could be asked to give the names of ten websites they visited during the last 7 days and also ask them to select the website they visited most during that period. Which website is used to download music files through the internet and the number of music tracks downloaded from commercial websites during the past 4 weeks etc. could be asked. Again the number of music tracks downloaded from any other websites in the past 4 weeks could be asked. Always count an album as 10 songs. This question may be helpful to assess the volume of illegal downloads/file sharing. Now, coming to the crucial questions, ask the percentage of these tracks they paid for and repeat these questions with regard to file sharing music and other categories. To bring down the boredom of the respondent, minimize the number of categories. Downloading and file sharing could be merged into one question if separate data is not required. Such a measure is quite necessary especially when omnibus surveys are conducted along with a parallel ad-hoc survey with a view to provide minute details.

Specific results and analyses
It is to be understood that the aim of the tracker is to measure illegal activity and the pilot helped in collecting and analyzing the data. Ofcom had developed three definitions for “illegal” downloader. 1. An illegal downloader is the one who is using any of the file sharing/downloading methods at Q4 other than “commercial Websites”. All these downloads are not illegal, for example downloading pictures from Facebook is not illegal. 2. This definition is applicable only if the respondent downloads or file share one of the six categories like music, video games, films, software, books and TV programmes. This clause is included with a view to eliminate legal downloads. 3. A respondent who has downloaded less than 100% of material obtained illegally, then he is said to be an illegal downloader. In other words suppose a respondent has 100 units of downloaded material. If any unit among the 100 is found to be illegally obtained, then is termed as an illegal downloader.