Description

Audio auditing enables audio recording of the interviewing process for quality control. Audio auditing automatically records the full interview for selected assignments, stores the recording in encrypted audio files, and synchronizes these audio files along with the linked interview files. It is not possible to record only parts of an interview, but it is possible to select which assignments will be recorded.

How to enable/disable audio auditing

Before creating an assignment

• In the main menu of the Headquarters navigate to Survey Setup > Questionnaires;
• Click on a questionnaire;
• In the context menu that appears, select Details;
• Click in the box next to Record audio to enable audio auditing.

After this point, all created assignments will have audio audit enabled.

To disable audio auditing, follow the same process to deselect the checkbox and switch off audio auditing for all future assignments. Any assignments that have been created until that moment will retain their audio audit recording setting.

For assignments that are being created with a batch upload, the corresponding attribute is _record_audio:

• set the value to: 1 to indicate that the audio audit recording should be performed for this particular assignment, or
• set it to 0 or leave blank (default) to indicate that no audio audit should be performed for that assignment.

After creating an assignment

• In the main menu of the Headquarters navigate to Survey Setup > Assignments;
• Click on the value in the AUDIO RECORDING column
• In the dialog that appears, check (or uncheck) the checkbox Enable audio recording to enable (disable) audio auditing for selected assignment.

This action affects only the selected assignment (even if multiple assignments are selected in the assignments list).

How audio auditing is enforced on the tablet

Just like with GPS or picture questions, Android prompts interviewers to allow the Interviewer App to use the microphone.

Naturally, survey managers could be concerned that intelligent interviewers would either deny Android the needed permissions, or accept the permissions but then subsequently disable them, thereby avoiding audio auditing of their interviews.

To prevent this behavior, interviewers will not be able to start interviews that require audio audit without enabling required Android permissions.

Similarly, survey managers may be concerned that this request for permissions, made for the first interview that requires audio audit, could tell interviewers that their interview will be recorded, thereby decreasing the utility of secret audio audits.

To prevent this, survey managers could explain that these permissions are simply needed by Interviewer application which, after all, has audio questions that do require the type of permissions Android would be requesting.

Important considerations

Audio recordings will increase the amount of data that needs to be synchronized with the server.

For technical reasons, the audio recording for audit purposes is not performed during the following situations:

1. answering of geography question;
2. selecting a file from the gallery;
3. taking a photograph with the camera;
4. scanning a barcode/qrcode with the camera;
5. adjusting the App’s settings, running diagnostics, etc.
6. answering audio question (nb: recording is taken as the answer to the audio question and not added to audio audit recording).
7. viewing map data in an external application (following the link shown in GPS questions);
8. switching to any other App, or
9. switching to home screen.

For technical reasons, interviews and their audio files must be sent together. The audio files are synced first, and then the interview file. That means the interview file will only be sent once the, potentially quite large, audio files have been sent.

Audio audit data format

See audio audit files article for details.