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Title Sound Bytes: Capturing Audio in Survey Interviews
Year 2005
Access date 28.04.2005
Abstract

The use of multimedia-capable laptops for computer-assisted interviewing (CAPI and CASI) is changing the way survey interviews are conducted. Audio output is now quite common in surveys, being used for audio-CASI. But interest in audio input-the automatic capture of digital sound files from the interview-has been growing in recent years. Digital recording shows great promise both for methodological and for substantive goals. Substantively, they could supplement the response to open-ended questions, giving the analyst further insight not only into what the respondent said, but how they said it. They could also be used to explore nuances in the response to closed-ended questions, such as clarifications or qualifications that are not routinely captured in structured interviews. They could be used to evaluate interviewer performance in administering survey questions. In other words, they can vastly extend our insight in the dynamics of the survey interview and help us better understand the responses provided. In this paper we report on the use of a digital recording tool in a survey on racial attitudes in the Detroit area (n=734). The tool, embedded in the CAPI survey authored in Blaise, turned on or off automatically at designated questions, recording the interaction in digital files. We will report on the success of this approach in terms of the rates of consent by respondents and the audibility of the interviewer and respondent. We used the recording of responses of closed-ended questions to explore the hesitations, clarifications or qualifications on the part of the respondent that are normally not recorded in CAPI surveys, and to examine possible interviewer effects in administering the questions. We also recorded several open-ended questions to evaluate the quality and completeness of the responses typed by the interviewers in the CAPI instrument.

Access/Direct link Conference program
Year of publication2005
Bibliographic typeConferences, workshops, tutorials, presentations
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