Statistics Canada's computer-assisted personal interview monitoring program

Over the past year, Statistics Canada has been developing and testing a new way to monitor the performance of interviewers conducting computer-assisted personal interviews (CAPI). A formal process already exists for monitoring centralized telephone interviews. Monitors listen to telephone interviews as they take place to assess the interviewer's performance using pre-defined criteria and provide feedback to the interviewer on what was well done and what needs improvement. For the CAPI program, we have developed and are testing a pilot approach whereby interviews are digitally recorded and later a monitor listens to these recordings to assess the field interviewer's performance and provide feedback in order to help improve the quality of the data. In this paper, we will present an overview of the CAPI monitoring project at Statistics Canada by describing the CAPI monitoring methodology and the plans for implementation.