Introduction to Intercepts, In-person Interviews and CAPI

Intercepts, In-person Interviews and CAPI (Computer Assisted Personal Interviews) are conducted by interviewers going to locations where respondents are apt to be found, and requesting their participation. They are commonly used to gather data from respondents that would be difficult to find by any other method. Common examples include customers of specific restaurants and stores, or a businessperson in a trade show. Intercepts are often conducted in malls where it is easy to find potential respondents and easy to visually screen potential respondents by age or other characteristics.

CAPI or manually collected intercept surveys can often be fielded quickly. It is relatively easy to gather national data using the large number of available field service locations. Since intercepts are in person, almost anything can be tested: visual communications, video, and even food taste and texture. However, people are generally less patient in person than by other modes of surveying, so intercept surveys are generally shorter than other types of surveys and the amount of information you collect is less.

For more complex information gathering, it is common to screen a respondent then invite him/her to an adjacent facility for more precise interviewing. Intercepts can be completed on either paper forms that are data entered at a later time or with laptop/handheld computers.

Go to the Respondents

If you want to know what customers think about a specific location, you can randomly select a sample and screen people based on if they have visited that location. But a much easier way to conduct the research is to go to the location and survey respondents there. This is especially true when you are dealing with difficult to find respondents or a small number of people.

The Problems with in-person Interviews

When surveys are conducted out in the field, it is more difficult to monitor and control the quality of interviewing. So it is important to verify the quality of the data that is collected. Costs are also a consideration. The cost of project management, on-site interviewing and respondent incentives are generally higher than for other methods, making this approach relatively costly.

Finally, this approach can be intrusive since respondents are interrupted and asked to participate. Generally, people don’t like to be solicited in person while they go about their business. So, this type of data collection must be done carefully, especially if your company’s name is associated with the survey.

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If would like to conduct in-person interviews, but don’t have the capacity to send interviews around to different locations, there are plenty of companies around the country who specialize in this type of data collection. Every major (and probably minor) city in the US will have a facility who can collect this type of data for your company. Many have multiple locations in different cities if you need some sort of national representation.

Introduction to Mail Surveys

Mail surveys can take a wide variety of forms; although they commonly consist of a paper survey that is completed by a respondent and mailed back. You will see these with various levels of quality and professionalism with product warranties, for customer service feedback, and in your mail. They are still popular because they can be very simple to construct and can often provide data at low cost.

Mail surveys are a good choice if the respondent is someone you know and/or they have an interest in the survey results, such as an existing customer or employee, or member of an organization. We also recommend the use of mail surveys where it is important that every member of the sample get the impression that their voice is important. A mail survey can also be used as a relationship building device, demonstrating that you are interest someone’s feedback

On the positive side, it can be easy to collect a large amount of data from mail surveys (although this depends on the exact methodology) - simply mail out a ton of surveys. They are not intrusive (as respondents are not interrupted at an inconvenient time) and they can respond when they want. And because mail is an archaic technology, you can reach nearly everyone you’ll want to survey with a mail or paper survey.

The biggest disadvantage of this type of survey is time, especially if you are mailing it both there and back. While surveys on the phone and internet can be completed in days, it usually takes two weeks at minimum to complete a mail survey (you’re looking at a week in post office transit alone). For this reason, mail surveys are often used to collect data on an ongoing basis for customer information like for product warranties, rather than for a quick snapshot type survey. You probably wouldn't want to do your political poll by mail, for example.

Design of the Surveys

Unlike surveys conducted in person and by telephone, mail surveys don’t have an interviewer who can provide clarification or answer questions, so it is important to carefully consider the design of your survey and to troubleshoot problems that can lead to reduced question comprehension and errors in responses.

Avoid compressing and compacting questions. Too many questions on a page create confusion and can result in response errors. Survey testing shows that respondents will readily fill out a survey several pages in length provided they feel the survey is important.

Obtaining an Adequate Response Rate

Unless the survey is conducted among a highly engaged group (say employees of a company), we find that multiple mailings are almost always necessary to assure an adequate response. Our experience has shown that a first mailing of the survey, a reminder postcard, and a second mailing of the survey to non-respondents is the optimum approach and will result in a response rate that is 10-25% higher than a single mailing.

The Final Word

There is nothing sexy about conduct research via paper surveys or through the mail. But there is a reason they are still around and why you see them everywhere if you look carefully. They are a relatively inexpensive way to collect information at the respondents’ convenience, especially when you don’t have access to email addresses or not everyone you are surveying has easy access to the internet.