Research description
You are invited to participate in this research study. The aim of this research study is to collect information about the personal travel behaviour of residents in all metropolitan areas across Australia. Information about people’s day-to-day travel behaviour is critical to predict future travel demand and infrastructure needs. This information is even more important during a rare event such as the current virus pandemic. Having this data will allow transport services to be better planned for the most vulnerable people in our society, when the next pandemic comes.
💰 Reward: $AUD 20 when complete 4 days of use
Requirements:
- You are eighteen years old or older
- You reside in a metropolitan area in Australia.
- You own a smartphone running Android (compatibility varies with device) or Apple iOS 9 (or newer).
- You have a Gmail account*.
⌛ Estimated total time spent: 41 minutes over 4 days.
- 10 minutes to install the emTripLog application;
- 10 minutes to complete the opening questionnaire;
- Less than 1 minute to fill in questions typically prompted after completion of a trip*.
- Less than 5 minutes to complete the closing questionnaire
Research team contact:
Name: Assoc Prof Taha H. Rashidi
Position: Associate Professor
Telephone: (+61 2) 9385 5063
Email: rashidi@unsw.edu.au
Position: PhD Student
Telephone: (+61 2) 9385 5721
Email: asiripanich@unsw.edu.au
Join this study
❗ By using the emTripLog application you consent that your data collected during the study period by the emTripLog application, which will be anonymised to protect your privacy, can be used for future reserach purposes.
There are just 3 steps to complete this study.
Install emTripLog on your smartphone.
Use the the application on your phone for 4 days.
Earn your reward! 🎉
Step 1: Install emTripLog 
👉 Use one of the links below to install the application.
| Operating system | Download link | QR |
|---|---|---|
| Android |  |
 |
| iOS |  |
 |
👉 Once the emTripLog application is installed on your phone, use your smartphone to click on the green button below which will launch emTripLog on your phone.
👉 You should see a pop-up window. Choose “Apply” and wait until the download is completed.
👉 Next, you must allow all the permissions asked for emTripLog to work properly. Especially, the location permission that must be set to the “Always” option, if it is available.
❗ If you are using iOS 13 the ‘Always’ option in ‘Location’ will not be available in the pop-up, as shown below. You must go to your iPhone’s ‘Settings’ ➡ ‘Privacy’ ➡ ‘Location Services’ ➡ ‘emTripLog’ and choose the ‘Always’ option manually.
| Notification | Motion and Fitness | Location | Permission |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
 |
Unsure how to change the location permission on your phone? See this guide for iOS devices or this guide for Android devices.
👉 Follow the instruction given on the application from here on.
👉 Once your finish the on-boarding process, you should see a blank screen like below. Now just leave emTripLog running in the background and forget about it. emTripLog will notify you when it needs your attention again. 😄
❗ Important notes:
- You must leave the emTripLog app running in the background, meaning that you should not quit the app as it won’t be able to track your location and fail you from earning your reward 😟.
- Applications that requires location service, such as Google Map, generally consume a lot of battery. In this 4-day period, you may experience shorter battery life than is expected. Fear not! emTripLog has been optimised to minimise the use of the phone’s battery use the battery (location tracking is automatically disabled when not needed). 😉
Step 2: Use the application for 4 days
ℹ To earn your reward you must answer all trip end surveys on the emTripLog app and leave it running on the background for 4 days. For example, If you join the study on a Monday at 9.00 AM, then the next Friday at 9.00 AM (24 hours x 4 days) is when you may stop using the application.
👉 Everyday at 8.30 PM, you will receive a notification to remind you to answer trip-end surveys. A trip-end survey contains a few questions about your destination purpose and mode of travel. The video below shows how to answer a trip-end survey.
👉 Upon completion of your 4-day travel survey, you MUST go to the ‘Profile’ tab on the emTripLog app and click on the red document icon next to ‘End Survey’ to fill in a post-experience survey. After that, you may uninstall the application from your smartphone.
Step 3: Earn your reward
Once it is shown on our system that you have completed your survey, we will contact you via the email that you have used to register to the study so you can receive your reward.
Acknowledgement
This study uses the emTripLog application, developed by Dr Shankari Kalyanaraman, which is built on the e-mission framework as presented in Shankari, K., Bouzaghrane, M. A., Maurer, S. M., Waddell, P., Culler, D. E., & Katz, R. H. (2018). e-mission: An Open-Source, Smartphone Platform for Collecting Human Travel Data: Transportation Research Record. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361198118770167
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
I have an installation issue, who can I contact?
If you need help to install emTripLog on your mobilephone please contact Amarin at a.siripanich@unsw.edu.au.
I don’t see any nofications from emTripLog
If you do not see any notifications from emTripLog, please make sure that emTripLog has the permission to show you notifications. See this guide if you are not sure how to turn on notification for an application on your smartphone.
How to turn on location service on iOS?
Please see this tutorial for iOS devices.
How to turn on location service on Android?
Please see this tutorial for Android devices.
How to turn on notification for emTripLog
For iOS device please consult this webpage.
For Android device please consult this webpage.
Why Gmail?
The emTripLog application requires a Gmail account for log-in. If you are not comfortable using your Gmail account, you can create a fake account just for this study.
What are the assumptions used in the total estimated time spent?
Assuming that you complete an average of 4 trips per day, it is expected that participation in this research study will not consume more than 16 minutes of your time during the entire study period (excluding the time spent in the user profile and post-experience questionnaires).
I would like to have all my data detroyed?
You are the owner of your data. If you decide that you no longer want to be part of this study please contact the research team at rashidi@unsw.edu.au to have you data destroy from our database.
Who will have access to my data?
All data collected from this study will be kept in a highly secured UNSW server at the RCITI lab and will be confidentialised to prevent your identity being exposed. The data will be strictly accessible only by the research team.