Couper / COMPUTER-ASSISTED SURVEY INSTRUMENTS Usability Evaluation of Computer- Assisted Survey Instruments

Computer-assisted interviewing (CAI) has a substantial impact on the way interviewers carry out the task of interviewing. Survey instruments are becoming more complex, necessitating new skills of inter-viewers. In addition to question wording, the design of CAI instruments is a focus of evaluation and pretesting efforts. This article reports on a variety of research activities related to the usability testing of CAI instruments, focusing both on interviewers (in interviewer-administered surveys) and respondents (in self-administered surveys). The article introduces practices and procedures of usability testing, illustrated with examples from several recent studies in which these methods were applied to the evalu-ation of computerized survey instruments