First, I would welcome the input from an evaluation expert! Next step for me: see if any research on this exists.

Just to be clear, we asked 10 questions rated on a scale of 1-5 in this mobile evaluation. Technically, you can have a scale of 1-anything, and/or ask for people to type comments. We chose numerical answers since it would help us crunch the data from 60 participants. Second, we had reflection sheets on the tables, where participants answered a number of other open ended questions with traditional paper and pen. Thus, the 1-5 scale via text message was not the only feedback we received.

We did feel that by capturing their responses while they were still in the room we’d get more participation and more accurate reflections than a post-session follow up survey, though we’ll also be conducting those through the year as the program progresses.