Use of audio-enhanced personal digital assistants for school-based data collection

The APDA system offers a promising new method for collecting data in the middle school environment. Students with cognitive deficits and language barriers were able to complete the survey in a similar amount of time without additional help; however, differences in data quality suggest that limitations in comprehension of the questions remained even though the questions were read to the respondents. More research on the use of APDA is necessary to fully understand the effect of data collection mode with special populations.