In the past year, an unprecedented number of companies have started using computer-aided interviewing. Yet, many buyers of interviewing services neither request nor desire to take advantage of this technology. Why is this?

One reason is that they don't understand what is meant by "computer-aided interviewing." Frequently, the term brings to mind those annoying phone calls at dinner time when a strange sounding voice says: "Hello, this is your friendly computer..." These calls give computer-aided interviewing—and market research—a bad name and have nothing to do with the use of computers for data collection.

Real computer-aided interviewing is the process of creating a questionnaire on a computer and having interviewers—or in some cases respondents—sit at a terminal and enter responses directly into it, rather than recording them on paper.

Interviewers still are very much involved in the process, either by reading the questions from the screen, or in the case of respondent-administered questionnaires, answering respondents' questions when something is unclear.

Another reason that buyers of interviewing services shy away from computer-aided interviewing is that the technology is still relatively new, and they are afraid of being guinea pigs for "untested" methods. Further, since they themselves often have little computer experience or expertise, they fear it.

The biggest concern seems to be that the computer will malfunction or someone will spill coffee on a disk, and a week's worth of data will be lost. This fear is most commonly expressed by the argument that a stack of paper questionnaires is needed when the study is over.

Client companies also avoid computer-aided interviewing because of the cost. Most data collection agencies charge more for computer-aided interviewing. They seem to· do so in an effort to recoup quickly their investment in both the hardware and the software, rather than spreading the cost over a long period of time. Clients believe that the cost should be no more, perhaps less, than paper interviewing, since interviewer productivity often is higher. When there is a full service research company conducting the interviews, clients believe that the savings in keypunching and tabulation costs should be passed along to them.

Finally, data collection agencies themselves suffer from some ambivalence about the new technology and often do not argue effectively in favor of computer-aided interviewing.

Why should companies embrace this new methodology? Are there specific advantages? What are the pitfalls?

If you are a client company thinking about using computer-aided interviewing, be assured that there are some clear advantages. One of the best reasons for using computers is that virtually any type of question can be asked. For example, more complex questionnaires can be administered because the computer will keep track of difficult skip patterns, recall previous responses for use in later questions, and add sums correctly. Out-of-range answers and duplicate responses are eliminated. Questionnaire bias is reduced through randomization, which is accomplished automatically.

Another advantage is that data collection agencies often can produce more interviews in the same time frame, since interviewers avoid paper shuffling and therefore work more efficiently.

Third, data are available much more quickly when using computers for interviewing. Topline data can be obtained at any time during the interviewing and can be reported as often as needed. For example, if you have a meeting in the morning where you are expected to present some of the data, accurate counts can be obtained the night before—or even the same morning.

Further, if open-end responses are entered into the computer at the time of the interview, they may be listed, sorted, and even edited for direct entry to a report. Final cross-tabulations can be produced more quickly and with greater accuracy since keypunching is eliminated.

What, then, is the best approach if you want to explore taking advantage of computer-aided interviewing? How can you find out if this is right for your research needs? How can you locate a data collection agency that has the requisite experience?

There are a number of steps you can take. Spend some time educating yourself about computer-aided interviewing. It's a good idea to visit facilities where computer-aided interviewing is taking place and observe the process. Sit down at a terminal and tryout a computerized questionnaire to get a feel for how it works. Since most questionnaires are proprietary, ask the agency to program one of your own questionnaires before you arrive or ask to see a demonstration questionnaire.

As part of the education process, you may also want to spend some time studying the demonstration disks of different software vendors. There are two reasons to do this. First, not all software does things the same way or equally as well. Therefore, you can look for vendors who use the software that creates the types of questions you ask. This will give you confidence that your study is being conducted according to your specification.

Second, you may eventually want to buy the software and create your own questionnaires to send to the field for implementation. This gives you greater control over how you questions are created and ensures that questionnaires are set up the way you want. You also can be sure that the questionnaires are thoroughly checked so that no programming logic errors are present.

Next, talk with owners and managers of different data collection agencies and ask why they favor computer-aided interviewing. Their answers may give you a clue as to how comfortable they are with the technology. Another important question is how long a facility has had the capability to conduct computerized interviews and how long the staff assigned to these types of studies has been been working with computers. Fears about losing data may be allayed when you learn that the people who run the studies are experienced.

You also need to ask data collection vendors what kind of back-up procedures are in place for the inevitable time when the system goes down. Will interviewing be halted? How easy is it to switch to paper? How much time is likely to be lost? What kind of experience have they had with this problem? In other words, how reliable has their system been?

You will want to ask what procedures there are for avoiding the loss of data. Some facilities transmit the data by modem to the client so that if disks are lost in the mail, the data are still available. Others print out the data, so that there is a hard copy back-up. Still others make copies of each disk so that there is always a back-up disk. The last solution needs to be done with care, however, so that the original disk is not overwritten or blanked out.

Another way to check out the benefits of computer-aided interviewing is to talk with the staff at client companies that are already using it. Ask why they do so and what problems they have encountered. They can also provide you with the names of data collection agencies that are best equipped to handle computer aided studies. Most software vendors also publish users lists so you can see who is using this technology.

Studying the advantages and disadvantages, educating yourself about how this new technology works, and talking with experienced staff at data collection agencies and client companies will help you decide if your company is a candidate for computer-aided interviewing. The new technology is here to stay. Whether and how you use it is up to you.