Interviewer
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.
March 10, 2021Web 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.
November 4, 2020Web 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: Interviewer App Web Interviewer Devices Android-based tablets Any devices with a web-browser Access to internet Required for synchronization only Required all the time Interviews appear on the server After synchronization of tablet completed interviews will appear in status *Completed*, incomplete interviews don't appear.
March 30, 2020Web 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.
March 30, 2020Web 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).
March 30, 2020Web 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): Tab Shows start new assignments, on which new interviews are possible to start. started interviews, which have been started by this interviewer, but not completed yet. rejected interviews, which have been completed earlier, but then rejected by the supervisor/HQ users to this interviewer.
March 30, 2020Web 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:
March 30, 2020Consequences 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.
July 16, 2020Troubleshooting
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.
January 8, 2020Interviewer 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.
January 8, 2020Interviewer 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). 1. Version NNN. Check for a new version The Interviewer App will try to connect to the synchronization point (server) and check for the availability of a new version of the App.
January 8, 2020Synchronization 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).
May 16, 2018Overlap 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.
December 15, 2022Shape file overlay
This feature has been revised in the recent update v22.06. Please refer to the shapefile maps article for description of the updated functionality. This feature is added in v18.06 for beta testing. We recommend our users to utilize it with a caution and keep us posted about the experiences with it. A single shapefile can be overlayed over the baseline map in a geography type question. This shapefile must be placed into a specific folder and must contain all three mandatory shapefile components (*.
June 14, 2022CATI 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.
March 30, 2020Setting 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.
March 16, 2017Set 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.
August 26, 2022Multiple 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.
May 7, 2018Updating 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.
February 22, 2018Interviewer App interface language/localization
The Interviewer application responds to the device language setting of tablets. 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. 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.
July 13, 2016Synchronization & 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.
June 24, 2016Download 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. Step 2: Open the Chrome browser and navigate to the address of your server.
June 23, 2016Dashboard Card
In the Interviewer and Supervisor Apps each interview/assignment is presented in a form of a card in the dashboard (or map dashboard). The card tab color corresponds to the interview status. Specifically, the interviewer will see the cards with tabs: blue: for interviews in status Started; red: for interviews in status Rejected; green: for interviews in status Completed; yellow: for assignments. Interview number (not present for cards corresponding to assignments). Assignment number.
June 7, 2023Interviewer Password Reset
This article describes the actions in case an interviewer forgets the password that was assigned to him/her. If you are a PDS administrator and forgot your password, refer to another article: PDS password reset. Important: Survey Solutions doesn’t store the passwords of interviewers in the clear text. So if it is forgotten, no user may look it up inside Survey Solutions, neither the Supervisors, nor the Headquarters, nor the Administrator users.
August 24, 2021Map Dashboard
Overview of the map dashboard Survey Solutions map dashboard is an alternative representation of the regular dashboard where markers on the map indicate location of respondents. An interviewer switches to this view by pressing the map icon located in the toolbar next to the synchronization icon on the main dashboard. Several maps are offered for the Interviewer application (three online maps) and (1 offline map), and more offline maps can be uploaded by the headquarters users using the same procedure as the maps are assigned to be used in the geography-type question.
July 20, 2020Interview Progress Indicator
Survey Solutions works with surveys that may contain thousands of questions, with whole sections being turned on and off dynamically, number of repetitions responding to answers in the interview and other complexities, which present a challenge for estimation of the progress. Yet at any moment of time a certain number of questions are answered (NA), and certain number of questions are not answered (NU). (These numbers were always reported at the interview completions screen.
May 11, 2020Interviewer App Notifications
The Interviewer App reminds the interviewers about recommended actions when certain conditions are met by issuing user notifications. It is expected that if the interviewers follow the notifications issued by the software their work will be more efficient, and will let other team members (e.g. supervisors) to act sooner on the collected data. Some notifications are shown inside the Interviewer app (at the dashboard) and some are shown in the Android system notifications tray.
June 3, 2019Password Best Practices
All users: Do not write your password on a sticker attached to your device or in another obvious place. Do not let any other person know your password. Do not rely on another person to communicate the password to you unless this is an established procedure (in other words it is normal that the headquarters users set a password for the interviewers, but it must be communicated directly to the interviewer, not through another interviewer).
April 5, 2019Interviewer Dashboard: Managing the Workload
Overview of the Interviewer Dashboard The Interviewer dashboard offers an overview of the interviewer’s assignments and the state of completion they are in. The tabs displayed at the top of the dashboard sorts interviews by their status. Navigation between tabs To navigate between the different tabs, the interviewer can either tap on the tab at the top bar or swipe left or right. To help interviewers differentiate between the different tabs, the color of the dashboard will change based on which tab the interviewer is currently in.
July 5, 2017Synchronization
Sending completed interviews and receiving new ones The synchronization button is how the interviewer initiates an information exchange between their tablet and their supervisor’s laptop. Synchronization performs two tasks. First, it automatically pushes any completed assignment to the supervisor for review. Second, it automatically pulls all new assignments and data collection instruments onto the interviewer’s tablet. After synchronization is complete, the number of new assignments received, number of completed interviews sent, and so on are clearly displayed.
July 15, 2016Quality Control & Marking Interviews as Complete
Checking whether all questions have been answered Quality control starts with the interviewer. The interviewer should thus do everything within their power to ensure that all questions are answered. The interviewer application offers three ways to do this. The first is the classic method that one might use with a paper questionnaire. The interviewer simply flips the questionnaire looking for unanswered questions or answers that have triggered red error messages.
July 14, 2016Moving Around the Questionnaire
Overall Interviewers should strictly follow the survey protocol for administering a questionnaire (e.g. asking earlier questions before later questions, completing earlier modules before later modules), but may occasionally need to move around the questionnaire for good reasons (e.g. review their work, move between rows of the roster if the respondent corrects an earlier answer, administer an independent module when the key respondent for that module is present). The interviewer can move around questionnaires in several ways.
July 14, 2016