Chaining projects for phone (CATI) interviews

Chaining is defined as using a primary project to start off a chain of projects without the respondent (or interviewer) being aware of the switch between projects. Chaining can be used to provide the best projects for a particular user or to setup omnibus style interviews where a single respondent is interviewed for several clients.

Chaining is enabled by activating multiple projects using the same sample table (and quota definition if sample based quotas are used) and setting the EnableChaining mrInterview level project property to True. This is set manually in UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server Admin or via the Activate utility's Advanced tab. It is expected that projects, where EnableChaining is set to True, will use a chaining specific client-created sample management script.

When the EnableChaining mrInterview level project property is set to True, the interviewing system acts slightly different by expecting the sample management script to set the NextProject InterviewProperty and specify the next project in the chain. The sample management script must also ensure that the Project and Serial InterviewProperties are kept up to date and set properly for restart or review.

In order to avoid problems with interviewers or reviewers starting secondary projects, it is recommended that these projects be hidden by assigning them only to project management roles. Interviewers and reviewers will be able to access these projects via the Phone Participants or Review Interviews activities even when the projects are not visible to the user in the UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server Admin interface.

▪Chaining is an advanced feature meant for advanced users. The standard sample management script that supports telephone interviewing has not been updated to support chaining. Chaining scripts are very specific to client requirements and must be built and tested by the client.

▪The EnableChaining interview property must to be set false for all canceled or failed auto-dialing samples that are returned in dialing provider.

▪A set of chaining projects must share a single quota .mqd file and quota database. This works with both sample‑based quotas and interview‑based quotas, but they must be handled differently:

▪Use one of the standard sample management scripts such as basic_sample.mrs or multimode1_sample.mrs, but add the logic to choose the NextProject in ReturnSampleRec.

▪Quotas might need to be added to the start of the chain but completed after a specific project completes or when the entire chain completes: Set QuotaAutoCommit = 0.

GetSampleRec and AuthenticateSampleRec are called as normal. However, the sample management script needs to handle restarts and must therefore keep track of which project is currently in progress, save serial numbers for each project, and then set the appropriate project and serial numbers into the Project and Serial InterviewProperties on a restart.

The script must set the NextProject InterviewProperty to indicate which project will run next. Setting the NextProject InterviewProperty to "" indicates that the project chain is complete. The system expects NextProject to be set for the Completed return code. The other interviewing return codes are non-chaining return codes and NextProject is ignored when set for those return codes. Chaining is also used in the Review Interviews activity (if enabled for the project). The system expects NextProject to be set for the Reviewed and RejectedByReviewer return codes.

When chaining is enabled, ReturnSampleRec is called an extra time for chaining return codes. The final call to ReturnSampleRec for any return code is indicated by a new EnableChaining InterviewProperty, which is set to False when the call has been hungup and no more projects are processed. This final call to ReturnSampleRec can be used for processing that should occur once only (like incrementing tries). In the example script, ReturnSampleRec includes special handling when EnableChaining=True but is ignored by the standard script handling when EnableChaining=False.

EnableChaining can also be set to False if the NextProject cannot be found or an error occurs while accessing the InterviewProperty. In this instance, the script must also handle this error case.

▪Chaining is supported in the Review activity when several projects are chained via a sample management script in the survey. This means that chained surveys can be reviewed when the primary project is being reviewed.

▪The primary project and all chained projects use one shared sample table and one shared quota definition. This means that the primary project must contain a copy of each question that is used for quota, even if that question is not used in the primary project. For example, if you want to quota on museum entrances in ProjectB then the museum entrance question must be added to the primary project. The museum question is not asked in the primary project and the quota is not pended in the primary project, but the question must be copied into the primary project so that the primary project can be used to create the quota document.

▪Survey chaining is not currently supported in CAPI interviewing. Web-to-web and telephone-to-telephone chaining is supported; mixed mode chaining is not supported.

▪Survey chaining does not require changes to the interview script; only the sample management script requires updates.

▪All history information is tracked against the primary project. One sample return history record for the entire chain is written for each respondent.

▪The entire interview recording is started on the primary project. This means that the file name and location are based on the primary project, and this does not change during survey chaining. Question level recording is started on each specific project (recordings are placed under each specific project directory).

▪There is no Previous button on the first question page of a chained survey. This means that you cannot go back to the previous survey's last question page.

▪For CATI projects, the introduction screen is only displayed for the primary project. This means that subsequently chained surveys do not provide an introduction screen.

▪When chaining CATI surveys, the project's customer account is verified. Chaining is disallowed when projects are not under the same customer account. When projects exist under the same customer account, interviewers are granted access to the primary project and all subsequent chained projects, regardless of whether or not the interviewers are provided access to the other projects in UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server Admin. You can ensure that interviewers start the correct project by only providing them access to the primary project. When interviewers are not provided access to the chained projects, those projects do not display in UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server Admin and cannot be accidentally used for interviewing.

▪A shared sample table is used when chaining interviews and all history information is stored to a single history table (primary project). This means that sample based reports are the same for the primary and all secondary projects. However, history based reports are only valid only for the primary project and are generally empty for the secondary projects.