Chapter V. A comparison of CATI and non-CATI questionnaires

It appears likely that a greater proportion of surveys will use the telephone as a medium of sampling and data collection in the future. As software developments proceed and computer hardware costs shrink, many of these will use CATI systems. This experiment can be used as a benchmark for the transition to CATI because it provides documentation on potential problems with changing modes. For most criteria, there are only small differences between CATI and non-CATI interviewing in this project. The criteria include response rates, reactions of the interviewer and respondent, and most health statistics of interest. There are, however, some exceptions to this finding of equivalence between methods. The first exception is the result that the average number of minutes per CATI interview exceeded that for non-CATI interviews. There also is some evidence that the interviewer variability estimates tend to be lower in CATI than non-CATI. Finally, there is evidence of lower skip error problems in the CATI interviews. The first of these results affects survey costs; the second and third, survey error. The first may be a function of software or hardware choice and thus can be addressed in new CATI designs. The second and third will be of benefit to all CATI systems in the future.