Abstract:
The aim of this thesis is to investigate how people process information in gamified surveys. However, little is known about how people process information in gamification in surveys literature for predicting future events. Previous literature have proposed certain factors that may influence prediction accuracy such as respondents’ effort, respondents’ perceived knowledge and respondents’ voting bias. However, the aforementioned factors have only been theorised in gamified surveys literature, where no real data have been produced. The current study utilises a quantitative method in the context of political polls to examine the factors in respondents’ effort, respondents’ perceived knowledge and respondents’ voting bias towards prediction accuracy of the correct winning party (Conservative/Coalition) in the 2015 United Kingdom election. In addition, information prime will be added to the current study to investigate its effect to prediction accuracy. Data from the gamified survey was administered and collected from LightSpeed GMI, an independent third party. The data for the current research was from a single wave of a longitudinal study, which focused on predicting UK election results using gamified surveys. In total, 986 respondents had participated in this wave of the gamified survey. Respondents’ were randomly split into two groups, with one group of respondents (n=523) were given an information prime in ComRes poll results prior to their prediction. While another group of respondents (n=463) did not receive an information prime prior to their prediction. Evidence from the current research indicate that when respondents are exposed to an information prime, they are less likely to assimilate their subsequent judgment towards the provided information, which resulted in higher odds of predicting a correct winning party. Furthermore, an increase in respondents’ effort has higher odds in predicting the correct winning party. In addition, higher perceived knowledge have lower odds of correctly predicting the winning party in the 2015 UK election. Finally, Conservative voters have higher odds in correctly predicting a Conservative/Coalition win versus Labour and other parties’ voters.