NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Acclaimed author and entrepreneur Daryl Collins will explore how technology can help researchers, nonprofits and businesses engage and serve low-income communities around the world. The William Davidson Institute and the University of Michigan’s Poverty Solutions are co-sponsoring the talk.

Collins will share examples of how her company, Decodis, is using technology to collect and analyze qualitative data in a more scalable and lower-cost manner. Collins will share examples of collecting data using WhatsApp audio responses to understand changes in gender norms and assessing Google Play reviews of digital lending apps in India. In both examples, Collins will share how she and her team used Natural Language Processing (NLP) – a common market tool – to detect key topics and phrases to unpack the meaning of the responses. She’ll also share how she and her team analyzed speech signals (such as pitch, duration of responses and voice modulation) in the audio files to determine whether the respondent was engaged in their responses, when the respondent was unsure, and when the respondent gave them a “canned response” — i.e., telling the researchers what he/she thought the researchers wanted to hear.

Feb 17, 2022,

5:00 PM EST