Interview and Respondent Life Cycle

Note: CAPI Administrator is deprecated. Please use CAPI Supervisor instead.

The following information is intended to assist CAPI administrators to better manage the interview and respondent life cycle for CAPI projects.

Interview Status

Interviews can be Completed, Screened, Error, Canceled, Postponed, or Quotafull

Redoing Interviews

• Canceled, Error, Postponed, Screened, and Quotafull interviews can be redone
• Completed and uploaded interviews can be redone if "Allow respondents to re-enter a completed interview and change their answers" under Web Options is enabled for the survey. However any changes will not be uploaded to the server because (as per item 6 below) completed interviews on the server cannot be overwritten.

Uploading Interviews

• Canceled interviews if never previously postponed will not be uploaded.
• Canceled interviews if previously postponed will be uploaded.

Reassigning Interviews

• The purpose of reassigning interviews is to transfer an interview that has not yet been completed from one interviewer to another interviewer.
• Completed, Screened, and Quotafull interviews cannot be reassigned. These interviews are considered closed.
• Error and Incomplete Interviews can be reassigned, but with a warning “Any data that hasn’t been synced won’t be transferred to new user”.
• Assigned interviews that are canceled can be reassigned.
• New and Postponed interviews can be reassigned. CAPI administrator should be aware of possible unwanted scenarios which could arise from wrong practice. Possible scenarios are:

Correct practice:

• New or Postponed respondent is assigned to User 1.

• User 1 syncs and downloads respondent on Device 1.
• Respondent is reassigned to User 2.
• User 1 syncs and respondents is removed from Device 1.
• User 2 syncs and respondent is downloaded to Device 2, and life cycle continues.

Incorrect practice 1:

• A new or postponed respondent is assigned to User 1.
• User 1 syncs and downloads the respondent on Device 1.
• The respondent is reassigned to User 2.
• User 1 does not sync and the respondent remains on Device 1. However the respondent will be removed from the device with the next sync. Even if the user then completes the assignment or partially completes it and syncs, the server would reject the assignment as it is unassigned from this user.
• User 2 syncs and the respondent is downloaded to Device 2, and life cycle continues.

Incorrect practice 2:

• A New or Postponed respondent is assigned to User 1.
• User 1 syncs and downloads the respondent on Device 1.
• The respondent is reassigned to User 2.
• User 1 does not sync and the respondent remains on Device 1, User 1 makes some changes but does not sync.
• User 2 syncs and the respondent is downloaded to Device 2, User 2 makes some changes and syncs.
• The respondent is reassigned back to User 1.
• Now User 1 syncs but as the record is already on Device 1, it won't be overwritten, so changes made by User 2 won't be downloaded to Device 1. User 1 completes and syncs and overwrites the server record, so any changes made by User 2 are permanently deleted.

Archiving Interviews

• Cancelled, Error, Postponed, Screened, and Quotafull interviews are never archived and removed from the device.
• Completed but not uploaded interviews are never archived and removed from the device.
• Completed and uploaded interviews are archived and removed from the device with the next sync if "Allow respondents to re-enter a completed interview and change their answers" under Web Options is disabled for the survey.
• Completed and uploaded interviews are archived and removed from device after 30 days if "Allow respondents to re-enter a completed interview and change their answers" under Web Options is enabled for the survey.

Overwriting Interviews

• Completed Interviews on Server: Once an interview is completed and uploaded to the server, it will not be overwritten by the app, even when "Allow respondents to re-enter a completed interview and change their answers" under Web Options is enabled for the survey.
• Postponed Interviews on Device: Once an interview is postponed in the app, it will not be overwritten by the server, even when server copy of the interview is different from and perhaps newer than app copy of the interview.

Device Local Storage Copy of Postponed Interviews When Unassigned

• When a postponed interview in the app which is already uploaded to the server is unassigned or reassigned and the user syncs, though the interview record disappears from the app it remains on the device in local storage.

If at a later time the same interview record is reassigned back to this same user, the local storage copy of the interview on the device will be used, not the server copy.

This is because as per item 6 above, the server does not overwrite any existing postponed interviews on the device, even when the server copy of the interview is different from and perhaps newer than the app copy of the interview.

• To overcome the above issue, you can instruct the app via scripting to remove the local storage copy of the postponed interview when it is unassigned.

As is described in the Scripting documentation, to postpone an interview via scripting you can use the PostponeInterview (“description”) script. To postpone an interview and instruct the app to remove the local storage copy of the postponed interview when unassigned, you can use PostponeInterview (“description”, true).

Shared Devices Between Interviewers

• As a copy of a postponed interview remains on the device local storage when unassigned and the server does not overwrite postponed interviews on the device, if interviewers dealing with the same respondents plan to share devices, they must first sync to upload any complete/postponed respondents and then delete all data (on Android) or uninstall and reinstall (on iOS) before the next interviewer can use the device.

Interviewer using Multiple Devices

• If an interviewer logs into multiple devices, the same set of respondents will be downloaded to all the devices. In such cases, a race situation can arise when the interviewer syncs from the different devices. The expectation is that:
• The earliest sync wins for Completed interviews.
• The latest sync wins for Postponed, Screened, and Quotafull interviews.

Cancel Behavior for New/Postponed Interviews

• Status: The Postponed interview status changes to Canceled when Cancel is selected from the survey menu.

Note: When canceling Complete/QuotaFull/Screened/Error interviews, the status does not change to Canceled. However when canceling New interviews, the status changes to Canceled.

• Upload: The App continues to upload canceled interviews if they were initially postponed. In this case, while the interview status in the app has changed to Cancel, it will remain Incomplete on the server.

If a new interview (never previously postponed) is canceled, the app will not upload it.

• Archiving: Canceled interviews (whether initially postponed or not) are archived and removed from the device after 30 days if not touched and unassigned.
• Cancel Modal: The Cancel dialog box is adjusted to indicate removal after 30 days and to indicate no upload if the interview was not initially postponed.

Syncing

• Manual Sync: To upload interview results and download new respondents, the interviewer must manually initiate sync by tapping the app's Sync button. Manual sync also checks for survey updates and uploads the app event logs.

• Automatic Sync: When the app is brought to the foreground, a sync is initiated for checking survey updates.

• WiFi / Cellular Data: The app uses WiFi when this is available, or Cellular Data when WiFi is not available, for respondent upload/download, for survey update checks, and for manually sending diagnostics via the app settings page. However, app event logs are uploaded only when a WiFi connection is available.