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June 15, 2005

CfMC Research Software Releases Survent 7.7

New release brings greater efficiency and remote interviewing functionality
by Mike Blair, Senior Nonstop Support Manager

CfMC is pleased to announce the latest release of Survent for CATI. Survent version 7.7 brings new efficiencies and functionality to the most robust CATI tool on the market. This release represents the culmination of four years of updates to the Survent computer-aided interviewing product. The centerpiece of Survent 7.7 is the introduction of WebCATI for conducing remote interviewing while maintaining project, sample, and quality control in a central location.

Here is brief summary of the new features available in version 7.7.

I. size parameters increases:

Survent 7.7’s changes in size parameters allow you to perform almost any operation without worrying about how big something can be or how many of something is allowable. The changes that will affect most people are:

• number of studies, stations, and sample records : The number of concurrent studies has increased from 200 to 400: concurrent stations have been increased from 2,000 to10,000 and the number of sample records per sample file have been increased from 500,000 to one million.
• quotas and markets: You can now have approximately 1,000 markets and the quotas that go along with them instead of the previous limit of 150 triple quotas and 250 markets.
• question size: This has doubled, allowing, for instance, 700 code question lists. The size of conditional statements has increased 10 fold, the amount of code text is 5 times higher, the amount of open-end text is now 5000 characters per question, and amount of data allowed per question has increased from 240 to 3000 columns.

II. enhanced supervisory features:

• New View mode added for review and/or alteration to completed interviews.
• aMarket (quota) summary screen has been added to see how many numbers are available in open markets.
• review a particular sample record’s information.
• control the total study with one command instead of using a list of stations on the study.

III. interviewing features:

• webCATI released: The introduction of WebCATI is the main feature here. WebCATI allows you to run interviewers in a browser-based environment.
• enhanced modes: Change Interviewer mode, Debug mode, Practice mode, and View mode all have been enhanced.
• better screen movement/displays: You can move on code lists based on the response text (move to item), use new key combinations for paging, begin and end. There is complete rotation control of code lists on the screen, larger lists, nicer displays with enhanced screens (eg. Duplicate lists and Study choice) in many places.
• more information available: Time between questions logging, current time displayed on screen, and the response to the previous question on current screen now available.

 

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IV. operational features:

• do more without paying a license fee: programmers can work at home without a software key, and we provide a copy of Mentor to run reports without a software license.
• every answer is logged and the data file is automatically backed up after each interview.
• update partial completes rather than write multiple records (optional)
• a“save data” option in case of operation failures: If a terminal gets disconnected, the software attempts to save the data and sample record. If a “blow” error occurs due to programming problems, the software performs in the same way. In addition, the suspend data is backed up automatically.
• better Survent summary logging and reports have been added; it is easier to write your own reports; you can log anything you want into your own customized log file.
• total support for long and case-sensitive filenames in UNIX

V. programming features:

• better error checking: the software will not allow data overlapping and quota name mismatches. The software provides a new error summary at the end of compiles so you can see the types of errors and warnings found. Unlabeled questions are labeled so you can find them more easily.
• it is easier to make “column-free” questionnaires with a new “WORK” data location that assigns questions to the next available location in the work area.
• it’s now much easier to program graphics on screens with defaults for various display features across questions.
• all question types have a “blank” optio n (allowing questions to be left blank).
• question code lists can be rotated in any fashion , much like groups of questions.
• languages can be separated onto separate code lists within questions.
• new functions: In particular, date-time functions to return differences and various formats, a function to find text, new counting functions, etc.

VI. utilities:

• utilities have been improved and reorganized ; there are now fewer utilities that have more features. Web versions of some utilities is available now and the rest will be available soon.
• Web output is available in all utilities
• Reformat utility has many new features:
• It supports the sss_xml standard
• You can export code text instead of codes for data bases
• You can export 0/1 Field type variables for statistical testing
• You can export to Excel and the program will split the file into subsets of 255 questions each to fit into Excel
• Sql export is coming soon

VII. webSurvent/webCATI:

• pass variables into and out of webSurvent or webCATI.
• run multiple questionnaire s that access the same study.
• control the display of complex grids with simple !HTML control commands that apply to all parts of the questions.
• rotate grids ; you can have color control across rotated grids.
• data is saved when you back up.

VIII. ODBC support:

Finally, there is support for ODBC-compliant databases. You can read from and write to the database during live interviewing from Survent, webSurvent, or webCATI.

We hope this new feature-set has you excited as we are about this version of Survent