Web Interviewer Retraining Instructions

Collecting data with Survey Solutions over the phone

Online approach utilizing any computer with a web-browser

This approach is most suitable for the interviewers working at a location with stable/responsive internet connectivity. The functionality and interface of the web-interviewer is also described in the pages linked from here. It is recommended that these generic instructions are reviewed and customized by survey administrators for each particular survey. The article is oriented on the agencies already having experience in using Survey Solutions for face-to-face (CAPI) surveys and in need to re-orient their operations for the telephone surveys.

Web Interviewer CATI

Use in call-centres / CATI

One specific scenario where the use of web interviewer is particularly handy is in conducting telephone surveys. In this case a call-centre is usually set up, with interviewers working from this office by reaching out the respondents by phone. The identifying fields of assignments are supposed to be pre-filled with the proper phone numbers that the interviewers will dial to get a response.

This allows to avoid purchasing the tablets and to re-use the computer equipment available in the existing call-centre.

Web Interviewer Overview

Web interviewer is a facility of Survey Solutions allowing the interviewers to work from the server, similar to supervisors and headquarter users.

Similarly to the Interviewer App on the tablet, the web interviewer allows interviewers to view their dashboard and conduct interviews. There are, however, some differences between the web interviewer and the Interviewer App:

Further articles explain particular aspects of working with the the web interviewer:

Web Interviewer Login

Headquarters and administrator users may create new interviewer accounts. There is no separate web interviewer account. Every interviewer can login to the data server (synchronization point) with their assigned interviewer credentials.

Logging in to the server is usually not required in face-to-face CAPI surveys conducted with tablets. After successfully logging in, the interviewer can review his/her interviewer profile:

The link to edit personal information (full name, contact phone, and email) is available if permitted by the corresponding setting specified by the server administrator.

Web Interviewer Important Notes

To prevent collisions of multiple versions of the same interview, the interviewer is expected to utilize only one tool for each interview - either a tablet interviewer app or a web interviewer.

An interview may be started with the web interviewer, and then continued on the tablet after the interviewer initializes and synchronizes it. In this case all the started interviews are marked as received by the tablet, and are still visible on the server (in web interviewer, as well as for the supervisor and HQ users). But the interviewer should not and may not make any changes to the interview since it was already received on the tablet. If he/she tries to do such a change, an error message will be indicated and the software will refuse the change:

Web Interviewer Dashboard

Web interviewers have access to a dashboard equivalent in functionality to the dashboart of the tablet Interviewer App:

Dashboard tabs (pages)

The dashboard contains the following tabs (pages):

Search

Interviewers may utilize the search box located above the table to find an interview with known interview key or value of an identifying question:

Web Interviewer Interviewing

Web interviewers can conduct interviews as per their effective assignments. To start a new interview, the interviewer switches to the ‘Create new’ tab and decides which interview to start by inspecting the identifying questions visible in the assignments table, as well as any comments by the supervisor/HQ, which may be left by them (last column). Once the interviewer is ready to start the interview he/she clicks on it and confirms by selecting the corresponding item in the menu that appears:

Consequences of relinking a tablet device

When an interviewer account is created at the HQ, an interviewer may connect from any tablet. Once the interviewer has signed in, that device ID is remembered and the interviewer must continue using the same tablet.

No other interviewer will be permitted to use the same device: they will not be able to enter their username unless the interviewer app is uninstalled (with immediate loss of all unsynchronized data).

It is not possible for one user to work on several devices. When the user attempts to use the second device a warning is issued that the data that belongs to this user on the previous device will discarded: “You are already assigned to another device. If you relink to this device all data on the old one will be lost.”

Troubleshooting

Interviewers in all surveys are to contact their respective survey managers/supervisors first, who will take reasonable efforts to determine the cause of the issue and possible solution including describing the issue and searching for similar issues in the users' forum and this support site.

If the issue is determined to be caused by the Survey Solutions code, it should be elevated to the developers including a detailed description, steps to reproduce the issue, etc. See more in the FAQ for email support.

There are special pages dedicated to common problems, such as synchronization problems for tablets. Make sure you read and follow the standard troubleshooting advice before elevating it to the developers. Include the description of the conclusion of the relevant standard advice, this will help in determining the proper recommendation.

The support team may advise you to utilize certain diagnostics tools embedded in the interviewer application or change certain settings. You can read more about this in the corresponding articles:

• Interviewer App Diagnostics Dialog;
• Interviewer App Settings Dialog.

Interviewer App Settings Dialog

Interviewers normally should not change any of the settings on this page, but may be required to do so based on the instructions of their supervisors or technical support.

Some combinations or values of these settings may cause errors in operation/synchronization. Change these settings only if you know what you are doing.

If you do make any changes compared to the default values, and you are requesting support from the development team, you must mention in your question, issue description, or the support request, which settings you've changed and which values you've specified.

Below is a brief description of these settings.

Interviewer App Diagnostics Dialog

The Diagnostics dialog provides tools for troubleshooting. Most of these tools require the tablet to be online (connected to the Internet). The Survey Solutions support may instruct you to use one or the other tool from the below toolset.

Below is the explanation of these tools with some example illustrations (NB clickable items below).

Synchronization problems

Synchronization of the data between the tablet and server is a highly complex process of communication during which a number of actions are undertaken on both ends based on the flow of incoming data. Survey Solutions hides the complexity of it behind a simple Synchronize button available to the interviewer at any time. Normally, when synchronization is completed successfully, the interviewer receives a confirmation message and some summary statistics describing the actions taken (such as number of received assignments or transferred interviews).

Overlap Detection

Overlap detection is feature in Survey Solutions’ geography question. It is applicable only to the geography questions placed in a roster. When activated by the questionnaire designer, it will assist the interviewers in marking the areas in such a way that there is no overlap between multiple marked plots/parcels. This is important to avoid double-counting of any area in calculation of the total area.

If an overlap is detected, the program signals about it at the bottom of the map, mentioning the other roster items with which an overlap was detected. Overlap detection works instantaneously, even if the answer to the question has not been saved yet.

CATI Interviewer Retraining Instructions

Collecting data with Survey Solutions over the phone

Offline approach utilizing tablets

This approach is most suitable for the interviewers working at a location with poor/slow/not-reliable internet connectivity. It is recommended that these generic instructions are reviewed and customized by survey administrators for each particular survey. The article is oriented on the agencies already having experience in using Survey Solutions for face-to-face (CAPI) surveys and in need to re-orient their operations for the telephone surveys.

Setting photo size and quality

Survey Solutions v5.22 automatically restricts the size of the images captured by the Interviewer App (see limits).
The information below is applicable only if you wish to produce files even smaller than those automatically produced.

Survey Solutions image (picture) question does not specify any particular size or quality of the photo to be captured with the tablet’s camera. Instead Survey Solutions captures the image supplied by a standard picture provider (typically the Camera application) installed in the OS Android. This allows Survey Solutions to benefit from controls and effects present in such a provider.

Set up an interviewer tablet by scanning a QR-code

When an interviewer launches the Interviewer App for the first time she needs to provide the following three parameters:

• URL of the server (synchronization point),
• login of the interviewer (account name on that server),
• and the password of the interviewer.

Typing in the server address may be time consuming and prone to errors, so to simplify the process Survey Solutions permits entering this information by scanning a barcode. This is especially useful for the ITs setting up a large number of tablets in the office for many interviewers at the start of the survey.

Multiple interviewers using the same tablet

Survey Solutions uses device tracking mechanism where for each interviewer account there is an indication of the currently linked device. In short this means that at any moment any interviewer may be utilizing only one device for data collection. Re-linking of the devices is possible, but it has some important consequences (explained here). 

At the same time it is still possible for multiple interviewers to use the same tablet for data collection, but every interviewer must have a different user account in the Android operating system to permit this. If this is not done, once the first interviewer initializes the connection, his name will be fixed in Survey Solutions, and other interviewers will not be able to log in. Refer to the Android OS documentation for supporting multiple users on the same tablet.

Updating the Interviewer application

Why update

There are several reasons why:

• New features. With most releases of Survey Solutions, new features are introduced–new question types, new user interface, new actions, etc. To take advantage of new features, the Interviewer application must be updated.
• Bug fixes and performance improvements. Each releases of Survey Solutions contains numerous bugs and performance improvements. To avoid bugs and ensure the best performance, the Interviewer application should be updated regularly.
• Break with backwards compatibility. In general, older versions of the Interviewer application will continue to work with an updated Headquarters server. In some cases relatively rare cases, however, new features break this backwards compatibility. When this happens, the Interviewer application needs to be updated so that the tablet can continue communicating with the server.

When to update

At a minimum, the Interviewer application should be updated every month. Every two months, typically a new version of Survey Solutions is released. In the intervening time, smaller updates and bug fixes are released.

Interviewer App interface language/localization

The Interviewer application responds to the device language setting of the mobile device. Localization affects the interface of the application, such as menus, dialogs and application error messages. The languages currently available are listed in the localization overview article.

The exact steps to change may differ slightly for different device models and operating system versions, but described generically in this Android HelpCenter article.

Note that you can still design the questionnaire itself in any language, including the texts of the questions, their options, instructions, and validation messages. Survey Solutions also allows multilingual questionnaires, which allow switching the language even during the interview.

Synchronization & Completing the Interview

1. Logging in

You can log in using the user name and password that you received from your supervisor. Tap on the eye icon to see your password to make sure you have entered it in correctly.
  
If you cannot log in, although you are sure that the username and password are correct, synchronise the tablet (see next step)

2. Synchronize

You should synchronize your tablet as often as your supervisor has instructed you to.
 
Synchronization requires internet access. To synchronize, press the “Synchronize” button at the top right corner of the toolbar. The results of the synchronization will be displayed: how many new assignments were received, how many were received as rejected and so on. 

Download and Install the Interviewer Application

Step 1: On the home screen of the tablet, click on the Applications button. The button is usually located in the middle of the bottom toolbar and the icon is a circle with six dots. In the applications menu, Select Settings. Select Security and make sure that Unknown Sources - Allow installing application from sources other than the Play Store is selected/ticked.

Comments

Comments can be left for any question. This may useful to explain answers that you have confirmed but that may appear strange or wrong to your supervisor.

To leave a comment, press for a moment on the question of interest. After a few seconds, a comment field will appear, into which you can type any arbitrary long comment.

Comments can also be left for you by your supervisor. These will likely be questions about the answers you have recorded.

Answering All Question Types

The Interviewer application allows several different types of questions: numeric, text, single-select categorical, multi-select categorical, list, date, GPS, barcode, and picture. As an interviewer, you must know how to answer each of them. To help you with that text, each question type is briefly explained below with visual aids.

Numeric

Questions that take a numeric response have a field for an open numeric answer. When that field is tapped, the numeric keyboard appears so that the interviewer can compose an appropriate numerical response.

Questionnaire Interface & Answering Questions

Overview of Questionnaire Interface

Answering questions

How to know when you have answered a question

There are a few ways that interviewers can know that they have successfully answered a question. First, the question shows some answer. Second, the tablet vibrates and the questions are surrounded by a red outline, if the recorded answer is not valid. Vibration can be disabled by navigating to Interviewer’s settings and removing the checkbox next to Vibrate when invalid answer is given.