In this article
For Web surveying, three statuses are commonly used:
- Complete
- Screened
- Quota full.
The survey author can place an interview into any of these statuses by inserting a Stop node at the appropriate position within the survey. However for telephone interviewing this list of status types is often too restrictive; users prefer to be able to categorize the stopped interviews into various status categories, for example “No reply”, “Busy”, and “Answerphone”.
Note: When using Extended Status codes the regular status type may be set to “No Change”.
To overcome this restriction for CATI surveys, survey authors can choose from a much richer list of status types by applying an “Extended Status” value. In total there are 128 Extended Status types available. The first 30 of these are reserved for commonly applied outcomes, another 8 with different IDs are also applied in particular situations, and the remaining 90 are user-definable.
Figure 1 - The Default Extended status codes group (as seen in the CATI Supervisor module)
When working with CATI surveys it is the Extended Status that the system observes when working in the CATI Supervisor. For example productivity reports, call management and scheduling rules are all driven by Extended Statuses. The three standard CAWI status types have corresponding (overlapping) Extended Status codes:
- Quota Full = Extended Status 4
- Screened = Extended Status 14
- Complete = Extended Status 13
It is important to ensure that an appropriate Extended Status is always given to an interview when it reaches a conclusion, and an appropriate setting for the standard status should be provided. The Extended Status can either be set via the stop node or by using the scripting function ‘SetExtendedStatus’.
A stop node in a CATI-enabled survey will have an additional entry field labeled 'Extended Status'. The Extended Status is entered as a numerical value (in the range 1..120). The first 30 Extended Status codes are reserved (the labels for these codes cannot be adjusted) whilst the remaining 90 codes are user-definable (the labels for these can be customized on a project by project basis if required).
Stop nodes should adhere to the following rules:
Define an Extended Status AND (if applicable) the overlapping standard status, for example
- Standard Status = Complete
- Extended Status = 13
Define an Extended Status, but if there is no overlapping standard status apply ‘No Change’, for example
- Standard Status = No Change
- Extended Status = 6
The only exception to either rule is when the extended status is defined with a script node using the ‘SetExtendedStatus’ function. In this case a Stop node will normally be placed when you wish to close the interview, and the Stop node must be set with the following properties:
- Standard Status = No Change (or an applicable overlapping status)
- Extended Status = Leave Blank