Interviewer qualifications allow the sample management script to match interviewers to sample records according to the requirements of the sample record and the interviewers' abilities. Common examples are language requirements, where the interviewer needs to be able to speak the same language as the respondent, and gender requirements, where it is preferable for the respondent to be called by someone of the same gender. You can also define qualifications that are related to individual queues so that records in those queues can be allocated to specific interviewers. A typical example is a refusal converter qualification linked to the REFUSAL queue, so that records in this queue can be allocated to interviewers who are skilled at persuading reluctant respondents to be interviewed. Qualifications such as these are usually set as part of interviewers' user accounts and are made available to the Phone Participants when interviewers start the activity.

Interviewer qualifications can also be used to implement sample segmentation. A typical example is where sample records are divided by region or some other characteristic, with each interviewer or group of interviewers being allocated calls to a particular subset of participants. In this situation, supervisors might ask interviewers to call different subsets of participants at different times or on different projects, so it is not appropriate to link these qualifications directly to user accounts. Instead, supervisors configure projects to prompt interviewers for these qualifications when they start Phone Participants. If the project's interviewing requirements change so that, for instance, more calls are required in a particular region, interviewers can change these qualifications during the course of a session.

Interviewer qualifications are a particular type of user property. They are set up by the DPM administrator using the User Administration activity. Any permanent qualifications such as language or refusal conversion skills are allocated to interviewers at this time. Interviewing supervisors determine which projects will use interviewer qualifications when setting up projects using Interviewing Options. They also specify which sample segmentation qualifications interviewers can set on each project.

When setting up qualifications, the DPM administrator specifies a default setting that will be applied to interviewers who do not have a specific qualification value assigned, and who do not select any sample segmentation qualifications during their session. With a language qualification, for example, the default will usually be that the interviewer has no language qualification so will receive only records that have do not specify a language requirement. With sample segmentation qualifications, interviewers who do not have a specific qualification for a segment can be assigned the “Matches any” setting which will allow them to receive all calls for that segment.

The default telephone interviewing sample management script that comes with UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server recognizes two types of interviewer qualification: those that are linked to a queue and those that are not. Qualifications related to queues must be called HandleQueue_<name>; for example, HandleQueue_REFUSED for the refusal converter qualification. Queue-related qualifications take precedence over any other qualification that the interviewer has, because the sample management script always checks for this type of qualification first.

When interviewer qualifications are not related to queues, any columns in the sample table that will be used in determining which interviewer will call those records must have the same name as the interviewer qualification. For example, if the interviewer qualification called Language defines the languages that an interviewer speaks, the column in the sample table that contains the respondent's native language must also be called Language.

If you want to base interviewer qualifications on information that is not present in the sample table, you can create a temporary (virtual) field in the sample table and place the information in that field so that it becomes available to UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server. You might do this if you want the interviewer's name to be available to the sample management script.

When a project uses interviewer qualifications and an interviewer requests a record to call, the sample management script proceeds as follows: