IBUC 2006 Abstract

NASS CASIC Survey Administration Application
Everett Olbert & Roger Schou; NASS, USA

One of the highest priorities of NASS is to develop and improve survey administration capabilities in its 5 Data
Collection Centers (DCC) concerning costs, response rates, case management, and enumerator performance. In
response to that priority, the NASS CASIC Section is developing a Survey Administration Application that will tie
data together from the Blaise CATI history file, survey response data, NASS Blaise Interviewer database, and
National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) cost data in order to give NASS DCC
coordinators and NASDA supervisors the information they need on a daily basis to manage their data collection
efforts.

The objectives of the CASIC Survey Administration Application are:
1. To provide tools, such as cost and efficiency reports, that help DCC coordinators and
NASDA supervisors manage BLAISE operations and NASDA interviewer staff efficiently
and effectively.
2. To provide timely and objective measures of interviewer performance and behavior.
3. To indicate when, where, and for whom, additional training may be needed.
4. To improve tracking tools to help with better cost estimates for new data collection efforts.
5. To identify potential problem areas in instrument and questionnaire design.
6. To ensure high quality data and meet target response rates.

Currently, NASS DCC Coordinators calculate costs on a weekly basis by hand which is very inefficient and time
consuming. DCC coordinators need the ability and tools to run cost reports on a daily basis to prevent cost
overruns. The CASIC Survey Administration Application will retrieve data from NASS’s electronic time sheet
system and combine it with data from the interviewer database and survey response data to provide daily cost
updates to DCC coordinators and NASDA supervisors.

Providing a quality data product to Serviced States is a priority of each DCC. Maintaining high response rates is a
goal and objective of each DCC in order to ensure quality data is being delivered. The CASIC Survey
Administration Application will provide reports such as the Office Interviewer Efficiency report, Daily Cost report,
and Survey Response Rate report on a real time basis as well as post survey reports. The system will also have
the ability to create an IGL file for any given survey.

This paper will discuss the functionality of the CASIC Survey Administration Application as well as several of the
reports that can be generated from the system.
The presentation of this paper will include an explanation of the functionality of the system and a discussion of
some of the reports available.

Contact: rschou.nass.usda.gov