Generic Management of Surveys and Interviewers: A Technological Solution for Mixed-Methods Surveys

Generic Management of

Surveys and Interviewers:

A Technological Solution

for Mixed-Methods’ Surveys

Deputy Senior Director, Survey Department

Overview of Presentation

 The Central Bureau of Statistics and the Survey Department

 The need for an integrated collection model

 Integrated collection in telephone surveys

 Integrated collection in field surveys

Israel in Figures

 Population – 8 million

 20% Arab

 35% aged 0–18

 Localities and population distribution

 40% of population lives in the center of country

 Half of population lives in the 14 cities of over 100K residents

 Area: 22K sq. km.

 500 km. from north to south

 GDP: $202 billion (2010)

The Central Bureau of Statistics

 The ICBS is an autonomous unit within the Prime Minister's Office

 The ICBS is headed by the Government Statistician, who also serves as the Director of the ICBS

 _{The ICBS operates by the power of the Statistics}

Ordinance (New Version), 1972

 The three main guiding principles of the the ICBS:

 Independence

 Reliability

The Statistics Ordinance content

 The tasks of the CBS and its mode of operation

 The obligation of the public to provide information to the ICBS

 _{The obligation of the ICBS to safeguard the}

confidentiality of the information obtained

 The obligation of the ICBS to publish the results of its statistical activities

Survey Department

 Responsible for planning and implementing data collection for all ICBS surveys

 _{Divided into 2 units:}

Headquarters unit – responsible for survey planning, and quality monitoring

Implementation unit – responsible for

implementing surveys and the data collection  The Department performs approximately 70

Methods of Survey Response



_{Self-completion}

Paper questionnaire – mail, fax, email (PDF)

Web questionnaire Email questionnaire 

_{Telephone interview}

In-person interview

The Need for an Integrated Data

Collection Method

 The increase in number of surveys

 The increase in number of respondents

 _{Improvements and innovations in technology}

 The demand on the part of the public and

businesses for a variety of options for responding

 Enormous increases in the costs of implementing the surveys

Increase in Number of

Respondents

Integrating Response Options in

Telephone Enumeration

 Integrating a computerized phone survey with paper self-response is relatively simple

 _{Paper self-response can be via mail (post) or} via email as an attached file

 To prevent contacting respondent who

answers, the phone survey administration system must allow for a status indicating receipt of a paper questionnaire

Adding the Internet to the

Telephone Surveys



Generic management system

Paper Q by post

Web

Telephone



We developed a web software that does

not require any installation or user permits

(using a software that needs installation is

a headache)

Procedure for Web Collection

 We approach participants with a letter that’s letter includes the web site address:

 UserName  PassWord

 Paper questionnaire for self-response

 Several days after sending the letters, we activate the phone collection system

 Immediate, automatic update of status when web questionnaire received prevents approach after receipt a web questionnaire

Improvements and Upgrades to

Web Collection: U

N

, P

W

 Instead of a random combination of letters and digits, a combination of a meaningful word

 Extra attention to words with the letter O, which can be confused with the digit 0

 Lower-case letters only so that there are no combinations of upper- and lower-case letters  Letters and numbers only; no symbols

Improvements and Upgrades to

Web Collection: Email

 having an email address for the participant, we implement the following:

 Sending an email with a direct link (“Click a Link”) to the questionnaire. Linking to participant is via a unique pass (number) in the link itself

 Setup that sends an automatic email reminder to non-respondents once a week

 Result: A substantial increase in web response rate. In the Business Tendency survey, the response

Integrating the Web in Field Surveys

 _{The difficulty of using the Web simultaneously}

with a field survey stems from the interviewer

working in the field and the potential of receiving an Internet questionnaire at any time

 Online fieldwork is problematic in terms of information security

 Integrating web collection with the interviewers’ work requires integration of technological tools such as the Smartphone

How To Encourage Web Response

Paper Q via post

55% 51% 4% Web only 60% 34% 26% Post @ Web

conclusion

 _{Mix mode data collection is a need.}

 The opportunity to learn from other countries' experience is essential.

Issues to deal with in the future

 Ways to promote/encourage web usage by respondents

 Enabling new technologies (today’s Smartphone and what will be tomorrow???)

 Security while using the net for national statistics

 On line data collection and information security

 Characteristics of the respondents and non respondents

 Quality issues using web/cellular like: unit non response or bias in specific questions (for example: who do

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