Breves conceptos de programación

I

(CATI)

Computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) in its simplest form has a computer replacing the paper questionnaire on a telephone interviewer’s desk.

Advantages of Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing

CATI provides the following advantages:

• More efficient data collection, because the inter-viewer enters answers directly into the computer rather than sending a paper questionnaire for a sepa-rate data capture step.

• More efficient and more accurate questionnaire admin-istration, because the computer delivers the questions to the interviewer in the correct programmed sequence, including any required rotations, randomizations, or insertions of information from a separate data file or from earlier in the interview.

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• More accurate data collection, because the computer can apply various range and logic edits as the answers are entered. These edits can range from hard edits (in which the system will not accept an answer outside certain parameters—for example, age at first marriage being less than 14 years of age) to ‘‘query edits’’ that require the interviewer to confirm that, while unusual, the answer is indeed that intended by the respondent (e.g., to confirm that age at first marriage was indeed only 14 years of age).

While this has been the basic model for CATI sys-tems since they were first introduced in the 1970s, and some CATI systems still have only this question-naire administration component, technological devel-opments during the past 30 years have provided many more ways in which the computer can assist the tele-phone interviewing process.

Quality Assurance Monitoring For quality assurance, most telephone surveys have a sample of interviews monitored by a supervisor, so the researcher can be confident that the questions have been administered by the interviewer as instructed (cor-rect wording, probing) and the answers given by the respondent faithfully recorded or correctly categorized.

Computers allow this to be done in an unobtrusive and effective manner, usually by the supervisor listening in on the interview on a separate audio channel while watching an image of the interviewer’s screen.

Further assistance by the computer for this process occurs with the automatic recording of the interviewer the supervisor is monitoring and for what time period.

A data entry tool for the supervisor then records the results of the monitoring session and a database in which these results are stored. The use of better allo-cation of monitoring resources, typically by an algo-rithm, queries the database, so that more experienced interviewers who rarely have errors are monitored less than those who are newer or who have been identified as needing more assistance.

Sample Management and Call Scheduling

Most CATI programs now have at least two modules, one being the questionnaire administration tool already described, the other providing sample management and call scheduling functions, such as the following:

• Holding the list of all the telephone numbers to be called, along with any other relevant frame informa-tion, for example, geographic region if the sample is to be stratified by region

• Recording information about the call history, that is, each call made to each number, such as time and date the call was placed, the interviewer who placed the call, and the call outcome (completed interview, refusal, busy signal, etc.)

• Executing calling rules that determine when the next call (if any) should be placed to a number, which could include delays from the previous call, or certain times of day or parts of week

• Prioritizing among numbers competing for delivery at the same time, for example, by queuing numbers that have appointments first, calls to households where previous contact has occurred next, and fresh sample last

• Delivering phone numbers to the next available interviewer appropriate for that number (e.g., previ-ous refusals to refusal converter interviewers)

• Producing sample progress information, such as number of interviews so far completed by strata, number of interviews refused, and amount of sam-ple yet to be worked

The sample management module often has a sepa-rate supervisor interface, which enables the supervisor to execute additional sample management functions, such as stopping particular numbers from being deliv-ered to increasing for a limited period of time the pri-ority of numbers in strata where the survey is lagging.

Automated Dialing and Other Call-Handling Assistance

Telephone technology, typically with a separate com-puter residing in the PBX (private branch exchange) or dialer, can also be considered part of a CATI sys-tem. While the main drivers of telephone technology have been telemarketing and other call centers, they still provide assistance to the telephone survey process by the following features:

• Autodialing, in which the actual act of dialing is performed on some trigger (such as a keystroke instruction from an interviewer, the interviewer log-ging in to the system or hanlog-ging up from the previ-ous caller, or in the case of predictive dialers, when the probabilities of both an interviewer becoming free and a call resulting in a connect exceed some threshold)

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• Auto-dispositioning, where the outcome of certain types of calls (e.g., busy, fax, disconnected) can be detected from the signal tones and coded by the dialer rather than by the interviewer

• Interactive Voice Response, or IVR, where a prere-corded voice replaces the interviewer and data is collected either by the respondent’s key strokes or machine-recognizable words and phrases

• Automatic Call Distribution, or ACD, which orga-nizes incoming calls into queues and delivers them to interviewers according to rules relating to call type and interviewer attribute

• Message push-out, in which the dialer can call num-bers without any interviewer involvement and deliver pre-recorded messages to any person, voice-mail, or answering machine that answers the call

• Recording of interviews for more accurate verbatim data capture or for more effective coaching of interviewers

• Playing of sound clips to the respondent (although these can also be stored in the questionnaire adminis-tration tool)

While some dialers have some sample manage-ment and basic questionnaire administration capabil-ities, at the time of writing there are few systems that manage the sophistication in questionnaire administra-tion or sample management that is typically needed in survey work.

Network and Internet Issues

Most CATI systems use networked computers so that all interviewers working on the same survey share a single pool of telephone numbers, access the same version of the questionnaire, and all data is stored in a central database. There are many advantages of a network system over separate laptops or other per-sonal computers. One advantage is centralized con-trol over the survey instrument, so that mid-survey changes to the questionnaire can be instantaneously implemented to all terminals. Centralized control of the sample and data is also advantageous in that the risks of exceeding targets or not identifying problem areas quickly enough are minimized, and ensuring appropriate data backups are made. Network systems also facilitate supervision and monitoring functions.

The Internet provides additional assistance by allow-ing the use of Voice Over Internet Protocol to carry the audio channel rather than needing multiple phones con-nected into a limited number of PBX exchanges. This simplifies wiring needs in centralized CATI centers and

enables distributed virtual call centers, through which interviewers can work from their homes as long as they have a sufficiently fast Internet connection.

The Future of Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing Benefits

When compared with the three other main modes of survey data collection (Web, personal interview-ing, mail), CATI still retains two advantages. First, it enables interviewer administration of questionnaires rather than self-completion, as required by Web and mail surveys. While there are situations in which self-completion can be methodologically preferable (for example, when collecting data on very sensitive topics), interviewer-administered surveys typically carry the advantages of higher response rates, higher item completion rates, and the opportunity to probe the respondent to get more complete answers. The second advantage is that when compared with the other inter-viewer-administered mode—face-to-face interviewing—

CATI is typically more cost-effective and provides for faster delivery of data.

Challenges

There are, however, challenges to CATI surveys that require resolution if CATI surveys are to retain more advantages relative to their disadvantages. One such challenge is the proliferation of cell phones (in many cases replacing landlines completely in house-holds) combined with societal and sometimes legal restrictions on the extent to which cell phones can be used in surveys. Legislative restrictions also influence telephone surveys; some states include telephone surveys in the scope of ‘‘do-not-call’’ restrictions, and others restrict the use of some features on the more advanced automated dialers. Although such legisla-tion is aimed more at reducing invasion of privacy by telemarketers, and in some cases specifically excludes legitimate survey research from the restrictions, the dis-tinction between telemarketing and survey research often is not recognized at the household level. Another challenge is the increasing reluctance of the public to participate in telephone surveys, although the presence of ‘‘do-not-call’’ lists and other privacy-protecting mea-sures may in fact work to the advantage of CATI sur-veys to the extent they will reduce telemarketing and 124 Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI)

other nuisance calls that have led to the current resentment of telephone intrusion in households. The apparently significantly lower cost of Internet surveys compared with CATI surveys also creates a challenge, although, as noted earlier, there are methodological issues that still work in favor of CATI surveys.

Jenny Kelly See also Do-Not-Call (DNC) Registries; Interviewer Monitoring;

Outbound Calling; Paper-and-Pencil Interviewing (PAPI);

Predictive Dialing; Sample Management; Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and the Virtual Computer-Assisted

Telephone Interview (CATI) Facility

Further Readings

Hansen, S. E. (2008). CATI sample management systems.

In J. Lepkowski, C. Tucker, M. Brick, E. de Leeuw, L.

Japec, P. J. Lavrakas, et al. (Eds.), Advances in telephone survey methodology(pp. 340–358). New York: Wiley.

Kelly, J., Link, M., Petty, J., Hobson, K., & Cagney, P.

(2008). Establishing a new survey research call center.

In J. Lepkowski et al. (Eds.), Advances in telephone survey methodology(pp. 317–339). New York: Wiley.

Steve, K., Burks, A. T., Lavrakas, P. J., Brown, K., & Hoover, B. (2008). The development of a comprehensive behavioral-based system to monitor telephone interviewer performance.

In J. Lepkowski et al. (Eds.), Advances in telephone survey methodology(pp. 401–422). New York: Wiley.