Which of the following is a reason why many companies use computer-assisted interviews?

Computer-Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI) is a face-to-face data collection method in which the interviewer uses a tablet, mobile phone or a computer to record answers given during the interview. This page outlines the advantages and disadvantages of CAPI and provides points to consider when deciding whether or not CAPI fits well into your questionnaire programming and design plan.

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Considerations
Disadvantages
Considerations
Considerations
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Additional Resources

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The wide variety of CAPI software makes it easy even for someone with no programming experience to program a CAPI questionnaire.
CAPI helps to ensure high quality data by facilitating logic checks, skip patterns, validations, high frequency checks, and enumerator monitoring.
CAPI relies on electricity, data or wifi connection, and tablets; the infrastructure and safety conditions of certain locations may not be compatible with CAPI use.

Considerations

Advantages

CAPI facilitates logic checks, skip patterns, and validations during the interview. This makes the survey more efficient and helps assure higher quality data. It also saves later efforts on data cleaning and data entry.
CAPI is a good tool to monitor enumerators. It can automatically record each interview’s start time, end time and GPS location, making it easy for supervisors to check whether an enumerator indeed conducted a given interview or not by comparing its time and GPS data to that of other interviews during which a supervisor was present.
Given strong connection to wifi or data, data collected by CAPI surveys is immediately uploaded in an electronic format. This allows the research team to run high frequency checks.

Disadvantages

CAPI surveys may be difficult to conduct in crime-ridden areas, since tablets or phones are easy targets for thieves. In these cases, PAPI or CAFE surveys may have a comparative advantage.
CAPI relies largely on electricity or data connectivity, which may not be feasible in some remote parts of the world. If CAPI data gets corrupted before it is uploaded to a server, it is lost forever. Battery packs and offline data storage can certainly facilitate CAPI surveys in regions without good electricity or data connectivity; however, PAPI may be the best option in these cases.
Relative to PAPI, CAPI less effectively collects data in interviews that entail many comments or qualitative information (i.e. qualitative surveys, survey pilots, etc).
Some respondents are not comfortable during CAPI surveys due to concerns unauthorized access to personal data. This may result in either no data from such respondents or low-quality data due to a lack of trust. Therefore, research teams should take adequate steps to resolve these concerns.
CAPI surveys require technologically competent enumerators or longer training periods for enumerators. This may pose a problem for surveys conducted in emergency or last-minute situations.

Software

Options

DIME most commonly uses SurveyCTO, an Open Data Kit platform, for CAPI surveys. Other CAPI software commonly used in data collection is listed in the table below.

Considerations

When choosing a CAPI software, consider the following factors:

Data capture: does the software capture all forms of data that you need (i.e. text, numbers, pictures, audio, etc.)? Does it have the language support that you need to conduct multilingual surveys or record multilingual answers ?
Questionnaire navigation: is it easy to navigate through the questionnaire in the software? Can you perform the skips and loops that you need to do in your survey in the software ?
Data quality control: does the CAPI software provide ways of controlling data quality (values within certain range, values with a required character, values without a certain character, etc.)?
Data management: is the data output file from the CAPI Software compatible with the statistical tool you use to analyze datasets?
Case management: does the software facilitate management of tasks for various people within the impact evaluation team during a survey?

Hardware

Considerations

When choosing a tablet to use with CAPI software, consider the following factors:

Wifi and cellular connectivity: preferably the tablet can connect to a network with widespread 4G coverage throughout the survey territory.
Front and back cameras: the cheapest tablet models have only front cameras, but if you need pictures of anything, these won’t work well.
Up-to-date Android operating system: the current fully-supported versions are marshmallow and nougat.
Size: the ideal size of your tablet depends on your questionnaire design and complexity. 7 inches is typically fine, though if your questionnaire includes a lot of tables, you may want to use 10 inch tablets. On the other hand, if your questionnaire is very simple, a 3.5 inch tablet may be sufficient.
Internal storage: aim for at least 1 GB memory. If the survey is particularly complex or you are implementing multiple questionnaires simultaneously, you may need more than 1 GB. You may also consider using tablets with SD card capacity to expand available memory.
Screen: if you need to show videos or photos to respondents, consider a HD screen. It not, no special screen considerations are needed.
GPS: your tablet should have GPS capacity in order to assure high quality data and monitor enumerators. However, GPS is typically pretty poor: it may take a long time to lock on to a signal and only offer an accuracy of 10-15 meters. Bluetooth receivers (i.e. GlobalSat BT-821 Bluetooth GPS Receiver) can help to enhance GPS capacity.
Font and language requirement: if you’re working in a place with a non-Roman alphabet, make sure that’s supported.
Battery life: how long can your tablet last in the field before it needs to be recharged?

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This article is part of the topic Preparing for Data Collection

Additional Resources

CATI stands for Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing. Just as computers have replaced the clipboard and questionnaire in face-to-face fieldwork, CATI has replaced traditional telephone interviews.

Interviews carried out by telephone are guided by a questionnaire displayed on the screen of a computer. The interviewer records answers using a keyboard and mouse to correspond with the pre-coded responses displayed on the screen. Any questionnaire routing or complex survey logic is handled by the CATI program.

Furthermore, most CATI software packages handle:

Sample management – i.e. The scheduling and allocation of the telephone numbers to individuals or groups of interviewers assigned to fieldwork on a particular study.
Quota management – ensuring that the intended number of completed interviews with specific groups or sub-samples are met.
Monitoring of response rates, call outcomes and scheduling of interview appointments.

CATI research has considerable advantages:

The interviewer is left free to concentrate on the interview itself as the routing instructions are taken care of.
Data is entered directly into the survey database in a structured format. This eliminates the need for additional data processing (e.g. transcription, data entry and coding). This helps to reduce cost and errors.
The intervireing process is make quicker because data is entered as it is obtained
Since feedback is being collected live, researchers and analysts can interrogate the survey dataset while fieldwork is still taking place. This also includes reporting survey results within live dashboards.
Modern CATI platforms combine telephone interviewing capabilities with online surveys, enabling mixed-mode methodologies. This is especially important in b2b research studies where several data collection methods may be necessary to maximise response rates.

There are also some disadvantages to CATI market research:

Getting a questionnaire set up and running, fault free, on a CATI system takes time.
Coping with open-ended responses presents some problems on CATI: Although the systems can accommodate open-ended responses, capturing them requires interviewers to have fast and accurate typing skills.
If a respondent makes changes to an earlier answer part-way through the interview, it is more difficult to return and make alterations than is the case with paper questionnaires.
Reaching some target audiences using telephone interviewing is becoming more difficult. Household usage of fixed-line telephones is declining, and there are increasingly stringent regulations around reaching consumers on mobile phones. The use of automatic dialers, for instance, is banned or restricted in many countries. For many business-to-business audiences, telephone interviewing is still one of the most effective ways of obtaining representative samples.

In general, CATI research is best suited to structured interviews carried out in large numbers, especially repeated surveys where all the possible answers have been worked out and can be listed as pre-coded responses.