Pencil and Paper Interview (PAPI)

Pencil and Paper Interview (PAPI) is one of the techniques of collecting data in a social research. The interviewer proceeds by question after question according to the questionnaire and the respondent answers. The interviewer records the answers to the questionnaire. In order the answers are representative, the respondents should be selected as a random sample.

The completed questionnaires are processed and statistically evaluated and so the necessary data are obtained.

For the interview the following characteristics are applied:

• It is clear who answers
• Percentage of completed interviews is higher than the return of the questionnaire
• It is hard to skip a question
• Interviewer gives the respondent more comfort than the actual questionnaire (for example, he fills in the questionnaire himself)
• Problem may be the feeling of non-anonymity with sensitive questions (respondent is in direct contact with the interviewer)
• Expensive technology
• Time duration demands lead to a smaller size of the examined sample
• Trained interviewers are needed
• Interviewer may (even unintentionally) influence respondents

Overall, it is a very precise technique of the social research that delivers high quality results. A certain disadvantage is its higher cost.

What to use the Pen & Paper Interview in practice for?

It is used for customer satisfaction surveys - for example, trained interviewers with a prepared questionnaire ask selected visitors of the store about their satisfaction with the provided services and their suggestions for improvement.