This release introduces two new features related to recording of audio:

• selective audio audit;
• control over format of audio recording.

Selective audio audit. This feature expands the audio audit capability of Survey Solutions. Previously the interviews were recorded in full. Now, the user creating assignments may decide to record only some selected sections where the value of the audit is the largest such as:

• where there are reasons to believe interviewer fraud may be the largest, such as around gateway questions opening/closing large (time demanding) sections;
• where the respondent’s exact wording matters (sensitive questions);
• where the operationally important information is collected, for example, consent for interviewing or data processing, etc.

Selective audio audit greatly reduces length of the recording resulting in:

• smaller size of the audio data transmitted with the interviews,
• faster transmission of this information to the server,
• faster export/downloading of this information for processing,
• faster inspection of the data by the personnel that listens in to the interviews,
• lower costs for data transmission, ML- or AI-assisted transcribing/translation.

Ultimately, all of these advantages enable the use of this technique more commonly and thoroughly, resulting in better quality data and higher confidence in decisions made based on survey data.

Read more about audio audit capabilities of Survey Solutions in audio audit.

Control over format of audio recording

A new workspace-level setting allows controlling the format of audio recordings (used both for audio questions and for audio audit). By specifying a desired recording format the users can achieve smaller sizes for data transfer or better quality of recording, which may be desirable for some studies relying on machine analysis of speech.

Read more about the audio recording format in format of audio files.

Bug fixes and enhancements:

• Change of paradata. For the InterviewCreated event the corresponding assignment number is recorded in the parameters column.

• Interviewer interface was frozen during downloading of large files/updates, and (in some cases) attempts to minimize the app or exit the activity with the Back button could cause the application to crash. This has been fixed.

• GDAL dependency removal: An earlier change made GDAL dependency optional for importing GeoTIFF files, but users at the HQ couldn’t see the extent of the imported maps when GDAL was not present. This is now fixed. GDAL dependency is no longer part of the Docker distribution.

• Reserved names change: several reserved words were not documented as excepted or were not producing an expected error messages when used in the Designer: rostertitle, Identity, RosterVector, QuestionnaireLevel. This has been fixed and if used, the Designer will report error WB0058.

• Occurrence indication in Find/Replace dialog: The Find/Replace dialog in the Designer now indicates the occurrence number of the matched text when navigating between them with the PREVIOUS/NEXT buttons.

• Trimming of synchronization point: Leading and trailing spaces in the server URL are now removed.