The present invention provides a system and technique for initiating, conducting,
and managing real-time surveys, in the context of a real-time discourse, such as
Internet chat, to provide dynamic, real-time survey results. A surveyor initiates
a survey by filling out an electronic form which is processed and submitted to
a sorting component of the invention. The invention imposes an additional layer
of functionality upon a Live Information Selection and Analysis tool which gathers,
summarizes, and indexes chat messages in a real-time discourse. The sorting component
matches the collected real-time chat messages from the LISA tool with correlating
submitted survey queries to provide raw real-time survey results which are converted
into a viewable format for submission to the surveyor. The present invention makes
it possible to initiate, conduct, and manage multiple surveys simultaneously to
provide accurate, dynamic, real-time survey results within the context of a real-time discourse.
