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In this mode the interviewer is free to choose any assigned interview from any assigned survey.
When the CATI Console starts in Manual Selection mode the interviewer is presented with a list of all the surveys assigned to them. They select a survey by double-clicking its name in the list in the left pane, and the right pane is then populated with the list of interviews available for this survey.
Figure 1 - The CATI Interviewer Console - a survey is selected in the Manual Selection mode
Each interview is displayed as a single row in the list, with the interview details shown in columns. The first four columns are fixed - these parameters are always displayed in the interview list by default. Additional sets of interview questions can be added as columns here, configured by a supervisor in the Forsta Authoring module (refer to the separate CATI Administrator documentation and Authoring documentation for instructions) and on the Interviewer Search tab of the Survey information view(go to Adding Searchable Questions to the Interview for more information).
Note that if the survey selected in the left pane contains no interviews (there are no records remaining in the sample or there are no interviews assigned to the interviewer), then the right pane remains empty. In this case only a completely new interview can be created.
Figure 2 - The CATI Interviewer Console - the selected survey has no interviews
When the interviewer is working in the Manual Selection mode, two action buttons are displayed above the right pane. Both buttons start an interview; the Start Selected Interview button starts the interview which is selected in the right pane and this button is inactive if the list in the right pane contains no interviews, while the Create New Interview button creates a new interview when there is no corresponding sample record available.
The Create New Interview button becomes available only when the "Allow dynamic creation of new respondent records" option is enabled in the Forsta Authoring module > Survey Settings > CATI Options tab.
To start an interview, double-click an interview in the list or select it and click the Start Selected Interview button .
There may arise situations when an interview needs to be started but the sample contains no corresponding record. For example an inbound call may come in from a respondent who was not included into the sample, or some testing may need to be carried out but there are no sample records handy. In this case the interviewer clicks the Create New Interview button . A new interview is then started which is stored in the database and can be viewed in the Call Management window. An interview started without a corresponding sample record is conducted in the same way as a regular interview, but it is not added to the list of interviews in the CATI Console. Make a note of the Interview ID which is displayed in the CATI Console bottom status bar when this type of interview is started - this ID can be used to find the interview in the Call Management window. You can also note the date and time when the interview was started (the Time of Last Call) as this parameter can also help to identify the "anonymous" interview.
If no surveys are assigned to the current interviewer, the CATI Interviewer Console displays the following message.
Figure 3 - Message displayed on logging in in the Manual Selection mode when no surveys are available
At this point the interviewer can either log out of the CATI Console by pressing the Log out button on the toolbar (go to Logging Out and Closing the Console for more information), or they can click the Refresh button to force the interviewer console to repeat the search for an assigned survey. If Refresh is clicked, and no assigned survey is found for the current interviewer, the same message is displayed again. The interviewer can repeat the procedure until the assigned survey appears or he/she can log out of the CATI Console.
An interviewer can search for a particular interview by applying filters in the interview list in the right pane. Each column contains a blank cell below the column header cell. To filter sample records by a particular parameter, click into a blank cell below the appropriate column header and enter search criteria then press Enter on your keyboard. The list is filtered to display only interviews that match the criteria. You can apply filters to two or more parameters simultaneously.
Figure 4 - Searching for an interview
To remove all applied filters click the Reset Filters button .