Analyzing Interviewer/Respondent Interactions While Using a Mobile Computer-Assisted Personal Interview Device

This article explores interviewer/respondent interactions using a handheld computer (HHC) & identifies issues arising from using a self-administered paper form to create a mobile computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI) instrument. To evaluate the success of this instrument, the authors used the behavior-coding method to evaluate a sample of about 220 audiotaped interviews to identify survey questions that cause problems at the administration &/or response stage. This article explores problems with the interview, as it was conducted on an HHC, both at a question level & overall. The objective of this study was to investigate whether the automation of this survey instrument encouraged standardized interviewing procedures by examining how interviewers read the questions & how respondents answer them. The authors discuss mode-specific problems that arose in the interview & propose suggestions for future surveys that use a similar method of data collection. Figures, Appendixes, References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2006.]