CAPI - Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing

CAPI relates to personal interviews as distinct from CATI, (for telephone interviews)

Rather than entering reponses on paper, an interviewer would key in responses from their respondent or interviewee directly into a purpose-built computer program on a small device or (decreasingly) a laptop.

CAPI software and systems providers claim increased cost effectiveness for large surveys and decreased coding and data-entry mistakes, as data need only be transcribed once and automated procedures such as response checking can immediately advise common transcription errors. In the case of the device being hooked up to the internet or WAN, results can be immediately transferred to the research office for admin or analysis.

Other advantages include less interviewer training, and speed. However CAPI is ideaaly suited for multi-subject street or shopping centre type intercept or maybe home interviews, where the data is mainly structured and interviews are short. They are less suited for qualitative research where deeper reponses un-suited to simple coding is involved.