Methodology

The online survey was conducted using the #datafree Moya Messenger App. The survey was available in six languages: English, isiZulu, isiXhosa, Setswana, Sesotho and Afrikaans. The Moya Messenger app, which is operated by biNu, has 4 million users, 800,000 of whom use the app every day.  Through Moya anyone with a mobile phone is able to receive and respond to the survey, whether or not they have airtime or data available.

Users of the Moya platform are predominantly younger South Africans aged less than 40, and mainly black or coloured. For this reason, the survey was also distributed through other media to obtain responses from minority components of the population that are under-represented amongst users of the Moya platform. For round 3 this also included making use of paid social media adverts publicising the survey on Facebook and Twitter. The responses are anonymous and we will not disclose the IP addresses from which we are receiving responses.

Most people undertaking the survey did so using a smartphone, access to which has increased rapidly in recent years. However, there is a skew in terms of who has access to smartphones, particularly between older and younger people. For this reason, in particular, it was essential to weight our data, which we did using Statistics South Africa data for race, education and age. This produced findings that can be regarded as broadly representative of the population at large. Details about our weighting can be found here [insert link to the weighting page].