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Web Survey Bibliography

Title From PAPI to CAPI while staying Happy: The case of the British Household Panel Survey
Source Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, September 1999
Year 1999
Access date 10.08.2004
Abstract This paper describes the conversion of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to a CAPI mode of data collection. The BHPS is a panel survey, currently of some 10,000 individuals in 6,000 households in Britain. It is now in its ninth year of data collection and is carried out by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) based at the University of Essex. Wave 9 of the BHPS went into the field using the CAPI instrument on September 1st 1999. The paper discusses the implications of moving from a paper questionnaire to a CAPI mode of data collection in the context of a longitudinal panel survey, and details the strategy adopted by the BHPS for making the move to CAPI within a tight timescale. Moving to CAPI midway in the life of a panel survey presents particular challenges including comparability of questionnaire design, secure fieldwork and sample management procedures, minimising mode effects, maintaining data quality, ensuring a positive response from respondents to the switch to CAPI, adequate interviewer training and experience, and secure data output routines. The complex requirements of the panel with regard to sample management in particular, led to a decision to make this wave of the panel the first stage of a full-scale transition to CAPI. In essence, the BHPS has adopted a ‘keep it simple and make sure it works’ approach whereby the main questionnaire instruments are being implemented in CAPI with the complex area of sample management remaining on paper as in previous years of the survey. This approach in itself presents certain challenges as the data from the CAPI and PAPI streams must be reconciled on receipt from the field. The paper argues that the strategy of the staged implementation will provide many of the benefits of a CAPI mode of data collection while posing little risk to the integrity of the panel sample as a whole.
Year of publication1999
Bibliographic typeReports, seminars
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Web survey bibliography - Reports, seminars (231)

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