Sociological research

Filling in a paper form is the most cumbersome example of currently used interviewing techniques: the interviewer finds it quite uncomfortable to scribble down answers into the form placed on his/her lap.

Less frequently one can see an interviewer with a notebook, who begs the respondent to move elsewhere, to a place where there is a wall outlet and a desk: it's not much fun to balance a dozen pounds of laptop weight in one's arm and worry about the battery going flat!

Our proposed solution will suit your requirements: either to provide a significant revision of the questionnaire form, or to change the modus operandi of your field representatives, or to increase yields and improve quality with a simultaneous decrease of survey time and expenses for separate technological stages.

The following information describes how the use of DigSee SURE solutions will allow you to achieve:

• impressive results of sociological research in the shortest terms;
• minimisation of losses in data input quality practically to zero;
• significant improvement of interviewing quality;
• exclusion of the secondary stage of data entry and the respective expenses.

The way it works in the field

• Your field representative holds a small and light Palm organiser and enters the respondent's answers into it as they are given. Before asking a question, the interviewer can see the question, the comments to it, as well as all available options of the respective answer. The interview is conducted quite informally, and it is practically impossible to make an input error, because the handheld automatically controls the quality of the input information. Depending on the answers obtained, the handheld provides navigation ("skip") to the following question, and therefore it is impossible to ask irrelevant questions. Moreover, when the interview is over, the questionnaire is automatically checked for logical consistency and, if logical mismatches are detected, the interviewer can immediately, while the respondent is still present, repeat the respective question and correct the questionnaire!
• Your clients will receive better results in a shorter time, and you sharply reduce costs. You would not need to organise secondary-stage questionnaire input anymore — questionnaires are entered into the computer when it is necessary: during survey conduction or interviewing.
• After filling in the questionnaire or form, your remote representative can transmit the survey or interview results to the central office in a few seconds, in a form ready for processing or for delivery to the client.

This provides the following: dramatic reduction of survey conduction time.

More confidence in the interviewer

People get quite anxious and reluctant when they see a thick paper form in the hands of the interviewer and understand that so many questions await them. Another option — an invitation to a bench or desk where a notebook can be placed for data input — will in many cases be refused. In this respect, a Palm handheld presents a preferred alternative: it looks compact, secure and even sexy, which gains more confidence of the respondent in the interviewer and thus improves the quality and information value of the interview. Moreover, the interviewer with a Palm gets more chances to look the person interviewed in the eye, and visual contact is an important factor for success!

Possibility of conducting interviews in difficult conditions: on the move, in public transport or in a crowd

Only the DigSee SURE solution gives a unique possibility of conducting "flash interviews" in difficult conditions — for example, in a crowd. There is no need to look for a place to spread your paper form: all you need for an interview is a Palm that fits your palm. The interviewer can walk together with the respondent and fill in his/her answers, or even do this in crowded public transport. Moreover, in a few minutes the filled questionnaire can be processed at the central office — and for this the interviewer does not need to move elsewhere: wireless technology helps him/her transmit the information to the office. This is true mobility in the current mobile world.

More safety for interviewers

Unfortunately, the world we live in is not ideal: too many localities are quite unsafe and unfriendly to outsiders. A person with an expensive-looking notebook is exposed to unjustifiable hazard in such localities. On the other hand, demonstrating such "red tape" attributes as paper forms provokes animosity and sometimes even aggression. Therefore, an option of furnishing interviewers with a very cost-effective Palm organiser, which can be hidden in a shirt pocket or in a purse, will guarantee more safety to your interviewers.

Qualitative improvement of survey/interview techniques

As has already been mentioned, each questionnaire or form is automatically checked for logical integrity when it is entered during the survey interview. But what happens if there are no input errors, but there is a lapse of logic in the questionnaire itself?

Our solution takes account of this possibility, too. The questionnaire can be saved with a special checkmark which means that the given questionnaire has logic errors or discrepancies. Later at the office, a manager or analyst will be able to conduct and print out the questionnaire analysis by the logical rules which "have worked" at the moment of the questionnaire input, for subsequent analysis or delivery to the customer. Moreover, there is a special mode of separate editing/viewing of "incorrect" and "correct" questionnaires. A convenient system has been designed for navigating through each questionnaire and the array of questionnaires.

Possibility to conduct a simultaneous survey in several regions with reduced expenses

It looks too good to be true, but your prepared questionnaire template will reach your remote field staff in a few seconds irrespective of the distance. Your remote representative can receive the questionnaire template either via common phone landlines or via mobile network using a GSM/GPRS connection. There is no more need to print paper questionnaires or to cover travel costs for your employees to get training on the new questionnaire.

Sharp cost reduction on training of your network interviewers on the new questionnaire

The prepared questionnaire template already contains all items of information indispensable for survey conduction. The rules which will not allow the operator to enter incorrect information, transitions or "skip patterns" which minimise the time of the interview, logical rules which allow to verify the respondent's answers or their logical consistency during the interview, both the question and the comments for the interviewer — all this is immediately accessible to your field staff. They would need practically no training to start working with the new questionnaire and the new software.

Speeding up questionnaire elaboration

First of all, it is noteworthy that the office version of DigSee SURE allows one to create a template of any questionnaire very fast and conveniently.

The difference at this stage from other software packages designed for preparing questionnaire templates is that DigSee SURE is oriented on fulfilment of definite tasks, namely question-by-question preparation of a questionnaire, and therefore a questionnaire template is elaborated in the shortest terms. During the template elaboration you can see all the available options and possible types of questions, and thus you do not need any special training to start developing a questionnaire.

Moreover, when preparing the questionnaire template, you can set special rules which would not allow any input errors. For your questions you can set a control of allowed intervals (syntactical control), specify where the answers are mandatory or optional, set "smart" navigation through the questionnaire depending on the answers of the respondent, and logical rules which will allow one to find mismatches in the form input or "lapses of logic" in the respondent's answers directly during the input process.

Reduction of survey preparation time due to incorporation of the earlier experience

DigSee SURE allows you to store in the system all templates of questionnaires and forms which you have ever created. Thus, you can easily copy any of the earlier used questionnaires and make "cosmetic" modifications in order to satisfy current requirements. Creating a template in the image and likeness of an existing one can now take just a few minutes!

You acquire an opportunity of practically error-free input of a large number of paper questionnaires at your office

If you need to enter plenty of forms or questionnaires without errors at your office (for example, those received by mail from "home users"), the Network SURE solution can help you reduce the input time and expenses with a simultaneous reduction of the number of errors made by operators. All the above advantages, combined with two data input options ("keyboard only" and "keyboard + mouse") and with a possibility of simultaneous entry of questionnaires from several workplaces and placement of the results on the central server — all these features make DigSee SURE quite indispensable for the input of questionnaires.

Storage, search and editing of questionnaires. Export for further analysis

At the central office, the DigSee SURE system allows you to effectively find and view arrays of questionnaires and organise their storage.

The system allows you to export, import and merge arrays of questionnaires, to search for a questionnaire and to switch fast to the required questionnaire or question. Managers can analyse the questionnaires marked as incorrect to find any lack of logic in them.

For further analysis, it is possible to quickly export files into the common .csv format (it is supported by the majority of statistical packages) or directly into Microsoft Excel.