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To protect user privacy, legislation in some countries prohibits live monitoring of respondent's answers until they provide their explicit consent for such monitoring. To comply with these rules the Forsta Plus software provides the means to enable and disable the interview live monitoring and recording functions.
Enable and disable live and deferred interview monitoring using of controls provided:
- On the CATI Options tab of the Survey Management > Survey Settings menu in Professional Authoring.
- By scripting functions which can be added to a question in the Survey Designer.
The "Monitoring and recording options" section on the Survey Settings > CATI Options tab provides controls which either allow live interview monitoring and/or screen recording from interview start, or prohibit such activity.
Figure 1 - CATI Monitoring and recording options
In addition to these settings, two scripting functions are available: EnableLiveMonitoring() and StartScreenRecording(). Both are used in conjunction with the "Only allow/start after execution of enable function" options. When one or both of these options is enabled, the call monitoring and/or video recording features will only be permitted after explicit consent has been obtained in the survey. This means that the survey programmer must include the corresponding script functions - EnableLiveMonitoring() and StartScreenRecording() - in the appropriate node of the questionnaire tree. See the example in the illustration below.
Figure 2 - The script functions
To specify a point where the respondent's consent is obtained, add a script object to the survey and type in the relevant function or select one from the list of the predefined functions. This will then be the start point from which live monitoring and/or screen recording is allowed.
Live monitoring cannot be prohibited again once it is allowed for any given interview - this interview remains available for monitoring/recording until it finishes with a status.
When live monitoring is prohibited for the interview, the Monitoring Not Permitted icon is shown in the Interviewer Activity view for the current interview. When this is the case, the supervisor cannot monitor the current interview until the point in the interview logic is reached which allows to start live monitoring (one of the scripting functions that are mentioned above). At this point the Start Monitoring button becomes available.
A situation is possible when the previous interview finishes and the supervisor keeps the Monitoring Console window open when the next interview is delivered. Live monitoring is not allowed for this interview, and the monitoring console will show a blank screen and a notification message in the status bar. The monitoring console will start to show the interviewing process when the interview reaches the point where live monitoring is permitted (when a corresponding function is triggered in the questionnaire tree).
Audio is also not available for interviews where live monitoring activity is banned. If you are preparing to record audio through the use of an integrated dialer, you should use separate functions that control the audio recording functionality from within the survey. They are added to the questionnaire tree in the same way as the functions described above.