TELEPHONE SURVEYS
    Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI)

    Today, many surveys are conducted over the telephone, and a special technology has been developed in support of that technique, called Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI).

    In a typical CATI setting, interviewers sit at computer terminals, with telephone headsets on.  When they reach a respondent on the telephone, they read questions off the computer screen and enter the respondents' answers into the computer.  This has a special advantage of generating a data set suitable for analysis in the process of data collection itself.

    CATI is often accompanied by Random Digit Dialing as a sampling technique.  Rathern than picking telephone numbers out of a directory, the computer can generate random numbers within the ranges of active telephone numbers in an area.  This avoids the problem represented by people who have unlisted numbers.  They have an equal chance of being selected.