WHAT IS A CAPI SURVEY AND WHAT IS ITS RELEVANCE IN MARKET RESEARCH
A CAPI (COMPUTER ASSISTED PERSONAL INTERVEW) survey is a type of survey applied in person (face-to-face) throuh an interview with the respondents, normally assisted by a personal computer or mobile computing device such as a cell phone, smartphone, laptop or tablet. It is therefore a structured interview, which flows as a dialogue between two people and is guided by a predefined questionnaire with open and closed questions. Unlike the Online survey, the CAPI survey is not self-administered, but requires a trained interviewer for its application in the field. It is also conducted in a physical site, agreed upon between the interviewee and the interviewer, or it can be conducted without an appointment in a public place such as supermarkets, parks, stores, public places, etc. The type of device used to collect field data for a CAPI survey ranges from smart phones and tablets to laptops and notebooks.
ADVANTAGES AND BENEFITS OF THE CAPI SURVEY
From a methodological point of view, the CAPI survey is actually a technological replacement of thepaper or PAPI survey, but with the great advantage that data validation and transcription is done right while the interview is being conducted. The advantages of CAPI surveys over other capture methods are discussed below.
DISADVANTAGES OF THE CAPI SURVEY
TYPICAL MISTAKES DONE IN CAPI SURVEYS
One of the typical mistakes that many researchers and market research firms make when conducting a CAPI survey is the use of online questionnaires as a means of applying the CAPI interview and thus collecting the data in the field, using a cheap online survey, created with Survey Monkey, for example, erroneously assuming that there will always be an internet connection at the point of interview, thinking that there will be no technical difficulties during application. Although it is true that most developed countries have an advanced public telephone network infrastructure, this is not the case in other countries, especially in Latin America, Middle East and Africa, where the permanent availability of the Internet, whether WIFI, wired or access to the public data network is not always reliable. Therefore, it is a fundamental requirement for the execution of a CAPI field survey that mobile devices are able capable of working offline.
Another common mistake that occurs in CAPI surveys is underestimating the effort of typing and transcribing after an interview is done. We have seen many researchers going out to the field with the questionnaire in Word or Excel, they make notes of responses in either of these applications, and then when they get back to office, they transcribe the responses into a spreadsheet or to SPSS directly. They completely underestimates the difficulty and time it takes to enter the data manually, as well as introducing possible human errors into the process.
APPLICATIONS OF THE CAPI SURVEY
The CAPI survey has hundreds of applications in the world of Market Research and Public Opinion in general. It is recommended that CAPI be used in those studies that require a sharp interviewer or observer who knows how to guide the interview accurately to collect good quality data. Among the studies that can be done with CAPI surveys are:
COMBINING A CAPI SURVEY WITH PAPER SURVEYS (PAPI)
In those environments where it is not possible to use a laptop, notebook, cell phone or mobile computing device, such as in highly dangerous places, poor neighborhoods or favelas, very crowded places such as the subway, prisions, etc., the CAPI survey could be combined with paper surveys (PAPI). In this way, we could use mobile devices in malls, hotels, restaurants, universities, educational centers, etc. and apply paper surveys in those unsafe places, where the risk of theft or loss of equipment is high.
TYPES OF CAPI SURVEYS
We can identify 2 types of CAPI surveys, first THE NAMED CAPI surveys where we know the respondent beforehand and can make an appointment to apply it, and second, ANONYMOUS CAPI surveys to be conducted on the street without necessarily knowing the respondent. In the first case, it is possible to feed the CAPI system with a database of participants, in which we will have preloaded information from the data we already know about the subject to be surveyed. For example, in a survey of doctors, we want to research the use of a certain drugs. In this case, we will know in advance the name of the doctor, Office address, Sex, Age and other demographic data. This information can be preloaded in the survey automatically and even validated with the respondent during the interview. The second type of CAPI survey is those in which we do not the respondent beforehand, such as street surveys, electoral studies to measure voting intentions, etc. In this case, it will be necessary to ask for demographic information such as Age, City where s/he lives, marital status, etc.
FIELD PLANNING AND METHODOLOGY USED IN A CAPI SURVEY
Although each CAPI survey has its own methodology, there are a number of typical stages that can be anticipated in any CAPI study, including the ones below:
AFFORDABLE SOFTWARE TOOLS AND SYSTEMS FOR CONDUCTING A CAPI SURVEY
Although in the field we can collect the data with any system, tool or software we want, the ideal is to use a specialized CAPI survey tool. The following is a list of the tools we consider most appropriate to conduct a successful professional CAPI survey. Some of them are very expensive, but some them as RotatorSurvey offer a fair price, very low-price CAPI sofwtare tools might be discarded as they ussually do not offer all professional features we require.
MORE INFO ABOUT CAPI SURVEY SOFTWARE TOOLS AND SYSTEMS
Video: CAPI method used in National Health Literacy Survey in the Philippines