Hello All,
I think I understand what Vladi means by a CATI system. CATI stands for
Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing. What those systems basicly are is
a digital questionnaire (like phpESP) and a database of telephone numbers.
When the interviewer wants to call a person het gets a phone number on his
screen which he can call either by hand or let the computer do this.
This sounds pretty basic, but sophisticated systems (like ODIN which we use)
can also been given special targets for people with different backgrounds.
It also records the reason for not responding to the interview. So this way
you can automatically see your response rate and get a representive sample
based on for example age, sex or district.
Allthough these are nice systems for call centres and cost very much, I
think that most of the phpESP users will not use it. But if you want to make
a plug-in I would be very interested, an open source version of a CATI
system is a very valuable thing.
I hope I cleared some things up. As I work with these systems as a fulltime
job, I think that these are very valuable.
Sipke
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Sipke Overbeeke
Project Manager
NIPO the market research institute
Telephone (+31) 20 - 5225 416
Fax (+31) 20 - 5225 333
E-mail S.O...@ni...
Internet http://www.nipo.nl
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