Monitoring Interviewers' Work in Real Time

The CATI Supervisor module allows live monitoring of the interviewing process.

As a supervisor you can see which interview questions are completed and the answer options selected by the interviewer for those questions, the time spent, and other interviewing parameters. If working with an integrated dialer you can also listen to the conversation held between the interviewer and the respondent in the course of the monitored interview. You can also terminate an interview from the Interviewer activity List (go to Terminating an Interview and Forcing the Interviewer to be Logged Out for more information).

Legislation in some countries prohibits live monitoring of respondent's answers until they provide their explicit consent. To comply with these rules the Forsta Plus software allows you to enable and disable the interview live monitoring and recording functions.

Enable/Disable Live and Deferred Monitoring

The "Monitoring and recording options" section on the CATI Options tab provides controls which either allow live interview monitoring and/or screen recording from the start of the interview (this option is selected by default), or prohibit recording until a specific point in the interview is reached after which recording is allowed. The "recording allowed" point is specified by script functions which can be added to the survey by the survey designer; refer to the Forsta Authoring documentation and the Scripting documentation for more information.

When live monitoring is allowed, you can see which interview is being conducted by the interviewer,

• Once live monitoring is allowed for an interview it cannot be prohibited - the interview is available for monitoring/recording until it finishes with a defined status.
• The monitoring UI grid and the Interviewer List grid are refreshed every 15 seconds.
• The supervisor can set up alerts for any parameter that is displayed in the grid in the Interviewer List dialog.
• You can terminate the current interview if this is required.

You can also perform deferred monitoring of the interviewers' work. This means that you can enable the "Recording" option in Authoring and all interviews will be recorded and saved both as video and audio tracks from the point in the questionnaire logic where recording is allowed. Recorded interviews will then be available for reviewing on demand for a fixed period of time (go to Live Call Monitoring, Recordings and Playback for more information).

It is possible to perform live and deferred monitoring simultaneously. This means that any interview can be monitored in real time (live monitoring) with the deferred monitoring option enabled so that it can be saved for viewing at a later time.

Starting and Stopping Monitoring

1. Go to the Activity Views > Interviewer List menu.

The Interviewer List is displayed. The picture below shows one interviewer currently logged in and live monitoring can be started for this interviewer.



Figure 1 - Example of the Interviewer List

2. Choose the interviewer you want to monitor and click the Start monitoring button for this row (ringed above).
   
3. Monitoring is started, and the Start monitoring button for the relevant interviewer changes to the Stop monitoring button .

When live monitoring is prohibited for the interview a warning icon is presented, and while this is active the supervisor cannot monitor the current interview. If a point in the interview logic is reached where live monitoring is allowed, the Start... button will become available.

The picture below shows that the interviewer is already being monitored so the Stop monitoring button is visible (ringed below).



The interviewer is currently being monitored

4. When the Start monitoring button is clicked, the Monitoring dialog opens.

Figure 3 - Choosing the monitoring option - with or without audio

Note that live monitoring also can include listening to the conversation held by the interviewer and the respondent in the course of the interview. This dialog appears only if the Dialer in the system is currently in the "available and operational" mode. You can listen to the interview audio only if the telephone number is provided in the dialog. The last number that was entered in this field and dialed by the dialer system is stored and will be shown the next time the Monitoring dialog is displayed. You can either resubmit this number to the dialer or edit the number before submitting.

• Click Start to commence live monitoring of the Interviewer's console screen and simultaneously listen to the interview audio.
• If you do not wish to listen to the conversation, leave the telephone number field blank and click Video only.
• Click Cancel to close the dialog and cancel live monitoring.

Clicking Start or Video only opens the Monitoring Console. This window shows the contents of the CATI Interviewer UI application window.

Figure 4 - The Monitoring UI window displaying the monitored interview

The status bar displays general information about the monitored interview - the name of the interviewer who is currently being monitored, the survey name, the interview ID, the state the interviewer is in at the moment, and additional information related to interviewer's actions - whether the termination dialog is displayed, or if the interviewer is going to log out or go on a break when the current interview is finished.

The Monitoring UI toolbar provides controls that allow for the supervisor to interact either with the interviewer or with the interviewer and respondent simultaneously. This functionality depends on the features supported by the integrated dialer. The corresponding button becomes available on the Monitoring UI toolbar. This functionality can be enabled and disabled in the CATI Supervisor system settings (the Administration tab). When disabled, this control set is not displayed on the Monitoring UI toolbar.

Toolbar buttons switch on/off the following features:

• - the Listening mode. Click this button to enable the standard listening-only mode. This mode is enabled by default.
• - the Coaching mode button will unmute your microphone and allow the interviewer to hear what you say.
• - the Barging mode button creates a three-way conversation involving the interviewer and the respondent.

Only one mode can be selected at a time. The button will be blue when the mode is selected or grey when not selected. Clicking on a gray mode button will disable the current mode and activate the selected one (the selected mode button will then turn blue to show that it is the active mode).

In a situation when the previous interview finishes and the supervisor keeps the Monitoring window open and live monitoring is not allowed for the next delivered interview, the monitoring shows a blank screen and displays the notification message in the status bar for the supervisor.

Figure 5 - Monitoring interface with blank screen and a warning message appears when live monitoring is prohibited

The monitoring interface starts showing the interviewing process when the interview reaches the point where live monitoring is permitted (when a corresponding function is triggered in the questionnaire tree).

Important!
Be aware that if monitoring is triggered by a function in the survey, it will be possible for the interviewer to return to a previous question (one presented before the monitoring consent was allowed) and monitoring will remain active.

Note that for interviews or parts of interviews where live monitoring is not allowed, audio is also not available.