CATI
CATI, or computer-assisted telephone interviewing, is a survey method in which an interviewer reads questions from a computer script over the phone and enters the answers directly into the system, which handles routing, skips and data capture.
How it works
The interviewer works from a screen that shows one question at a time. The software applies skip logic, rotates answer orders, checks for impossible values and records responses as they are given, so data is ready for analysis as soon as calls end. Call-management features schedule callbacks and track outcomes for each number in the sample.
CATI replaced paper phone surveys because it is faster and more consistent, and it remains in use in government and health surveys; the US Census Bureau still publishes design guidance for its CATI and CAPI instruments. Because the mode shapes how people answer, researchers compare CATI results with web or in-person results carefully, accounting for mode effects.
A worked example
A regional utility runs a CATI satisfaction survey of 800 customers over 10 days, with 12 interviewers and a 15-minute script. Callbacks raise completed interviews from 540 after first attempts to 800. Routing sends the 190 customers who reported an outage to 6 extra questions.
Related
Automate this in Pulse
Open-ended answers, which a CATI interviewer has to key into the system while the call is live, come back from a Pulse interview in the participant's own words, as a full transcript with the recording.