The Impact of Computer-Assisted Interviewing on Interview Length

Nicole Watson and Roger Wilkins ()

Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series from Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne

Abstract: Computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) offers many attractive benefits over paper and pencil interviewing. There is, however, mixed evidence on the impact of CAPI on interview length, an important survey outcome in the context of length limits imposed by survey budgets and concerns over respondent burden. In this paper, recent data from a large, nationally representative panel study is used to investigate CAPI’s impact on interview length. A key feature of our analysis is that, through use of both experimental and quasiexperimental evidence, we examine the roles played by specific factors which, while typically associated with CAPI, vary in their extent and nature from study to study. We find that effects very much depend on how CAPI is implemented: the hardware and software adopted, the extent and nature of the dependent data introduced, and even interviewer workloads, can all have large influences on the CAPI impact—a finding that helps explain the conflicting results from previous studies. Overall, we conclude that, absent dependent data, CAPI will almost certainly increase interview lengths. However, the potential reductions in interview length from dependent data are very large, such that even modest levels of dependent data can lead to net reductions in interview lengths.

Keywords: Computer-assisted methods; interview length decomposition; dependent data; interviewer composition; learning effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2012-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/downloads ... series/wp2012n10.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2012n10

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series from Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010 Australia. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sheri Carnegie ().