Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and the Virtual Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) Facility

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) refers to realtime telecommunication using the Internet to carry the digitized versions of the voices that are speaking to each other. The world of telecommunications has been turned on its ear in the past few years with VoIP telephony challenging the regional telephone companies as broadband connections provided by cable TV [Page 951]vendors penetrate the market. This technological change has the potential to be a force to redesign computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) and multi-modal survey interviewing efforts. For example, starting in 2002, the Center for Human Resource Research (CHRR) at Ohio State University began implementing such a redesign.

A number of survey organizations have converted their office phone systems to VoIP using large, well-established vendors of proprietary systems. These systems tend to be more costly to deploy than those obtainable from smaller companies offering a more open architecture. Moreover, because the “big name” systems are proprietary and targeted at the office environment, they are often harder to adapt and customize for survey research applications. A more open architecture allows for more creativity in designing the integration of survey interviewing and telephony.

Modern computing emphasizes the use of the Internet and relational database techniques. The CAPI (computer-assisted personal interviewing) and CATI technology used at CHRR for the past 2 years utilizes these technologies. For CATI, the client on the interviewer's machine communicates with the server at CHRR, and for CAPI, the client and “server” (an application that runs on several laptops) are both present on the interviewer' s computer. This makes CATI/CAPI not two software systems but one. Whether for financial transaction processing, online shopping, or CATI interviewing, relational database tools are designed to support a high volume of queries and transaction processing. If a CATI interviewer can access a remote server via the Web from the telephone research facility, they can do so from home or from thousands of miles away. If they have a broadband connection, they can readily and inexpensively be connected to a VoIP system with a “softphone” (software that handles all the steps in placing or answering a call, and a USB connection for the interviewer's headset). The Internet carries the conversation from the interviewer's location to the central office where it crosses over to the public switched telephone network. A Web-based dialer schedules calls, presents cases to the interviewer, and places the calls.

With a VoIP connection to an interviewer's home (or to a research call center), he or she can log, record, and monitor calls just as in other traditional call centers. By using a client-server approach, the data are stored only in the central office, never at the remote location. Interviewers can be trained over the Internet, with utilities that allow the trainees to view the instructor's monitor as he or she instructs them on the use of the system and on proper interviewing techniques. During the venerable round-robin parts of interviewer training, where each trainee takes turns acting as the interviewer and the instructor acts as the respondent, the same utility allows the instructor to view the monitor of each trainee. As soon as someone falls behind or fails to follow directions, the trainer notices the nonconforming screen and brings that trainee back with the rest of the group. A single trainer can handle the groups of approximately eight trainees quite readily.

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