Paper-and-Pencil Interviewing (PAPI)

Prior to the 1980s, essentially all survey data collection that was done by an interviewer was done via paper-and-pencil interviewing, which came to be known as PAPI. Following the microcomputer revolution of the early 1980s, computer-assisted interviewing (CAI)—for example, computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI), computer-assisted self-interviewing (CASI), and computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI)—had become commonplace by the 1990s, essentially eliminating most uses of PAPI, with some exceptions. PAPI still is used in instances where data are being gathered from a relatively small sample, with a noncom-plex questionnaire, on an accelerated start-up time basis, and/or the time and effort it would take to program (and test) the instrument into a computer-assisted version simply is not justified. PAPI also serves as a backup for those times when computer systems ...