Chapter Nine. Survey Research
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.