Real-time Automated Surveys among Low-literate Masses using Voice-based Telephone Services

This paper explores the use of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems for automatic surveys, data validation and prescreening. We report a deployment aimed at employing voice-based, telephone services to conduct automated, structured interviews of low-literate users and to advertise relevant development-related services to them. Survey calls were placed to 67,000 vocational training recipients to validate their phone numbers and to find out their current job status. Of these, 45,500 answered these calls and 11,500 (25%) responded to the survey questions. Manually conducted follow-up interviews found more than 70% of the survey results to be consistent and also revealed the impact of phone sharing (among family members), call timing, simplicity of interface and surveyor-participant interpretation mismatch regarding certain survey questions on participant involvement and the validity of survey results. The paper discusses the use of IVR to collect information, possible system design considerations and factors affecting the accuracy of gathered information.