A flying start of the SRF
In the catastrophic year of 1984 we wanted to escape from the terrible atmosphere at the University of Amsterdam and went for the summer holidays to Vienna. We always enjoyed it being there, going to the wine gardens in Grinzing, to operettas, Viennese cafes or just strolling through the city. One day on our way from the city center to the house of Irmtraud´s grandmother, we walked in the Kärntnerstrasse at the opposite site of the Opera when we passed a computer shop. Why did we both remember this moment so clearly?
There we did a discovery
There we stopped for a moment because I saw a new toy for home computers: a tool by which a computer could contact other computers through telephone lines: a modem.
I immediately saw the possible application of modems for social science research: one did not need interviewers any more once people had at home a computer, a modem and a telephone connection. Interviews could be sent from a central computer to the household, they could answer the questions and next the answers could be returned to the central computer. The interviewer, one source of errors, could be removed. More precise measurement using computer assisted interviewing would be possible. The only question was: how expensive would it be?
So we went into the shop and asked about the price and the possible application with home computers. All seemed reasonably cost effective given the price of survey research with interviewers. It was clear to me that this was definitely a project that the SRF should explore further, given the work we had already done on computer assisted data collection.
Exploration of the possibilities
Being back in Amsterdam I spoke about the new research for the SFR with Leo van Doorn who was still working on his project concerning improving measurement using psychophysical scaling and computer assisted data collection. He was immediately enthusiastic about it. So we bought an Atari home computer and a modem and he started to experiment with these new toys.
There we stopped for a moment because I saw a new toy for home computers: a tool by which a computer could contact other computers through telephone lines: a modem.
I immediately saw the possible application of modems for social science research: one did not need interviewers any more once people had at home a computer, a modem and a telephone connection. Interviews could be sent from a central computer to the household, they could answer the questions and next the answers could be returned to the central computer. The interviewer, one source of errors, could be removed. More precise measurement using computer assisted interviewing would be possible. The only question was: how expensive would it be?
So we went into the shop and asked about the price and the possible application with home computers. All seemed reasonably cost effective given the price of survey research with interviewers. It was clear to me that this was definitely a project that the SRF should explore further, given the work we had already done on computer assisted data collection.
Exploration of the possibilities
Being back in Amsterdam I spoke about the new research for the SFR with Leo van Doorn who was still working on his project concerning improving measurement using psychophysical scaling and computer assisted data collection. He was immediately enthusiastic about it. So we bought an Atari home computer and a modem and he started to experiment with these new toys.
First of all he tested the possibility of using the communication system Viditel of the Dutch National Postal and Telephone Services. This system provided a possibility to present screens with information on the television. The users could ask for more information and provide reactions. So we could put questions on a series of screens, ask respondents to go to these screens and answer these questions. Viditel could make a data tape and send it to us. In principle we saw that the procedure worked but for our application the problem was that the formats of the questions that could be used were very limited. This meant that we could not use our advanced measurement procedures.
The alternative was to use our computer program to make the questionnaire, send the questionnaire to the people via the modem and send the answers to a big computer for further analysis. In order to create this system the interview program that Marius de Pijper at the Free University had made, had to be rewritten for the Atari computer and the communication software had to be made. I asked Marius if he wanted to do that. Fortunately he was immediately interested to do it because programming was his favorite activity. Soon we saw that the whole procedure was working well and could be used as I had thought at the moment that we saw the modem in Vienna.
The alternative was to use our computer program to make the questionnaire, send the questionnaire to the people via the modem and send the answers to a big computer for further analysis. In order to create this system the interview program that Marius de Pijper at the Free University had made, had to be rewritten for the Atari computer and the communication software had to be made. I asked Marius if he wanted to do that. Fortunately he was immediately interested to do it because programming was his favorite activity. Soon we saw that the whole procedure was working well and could be used as I had thought at the moment that we saw the modem in Vienna.
Leo pesents the new approach
In November or December of that year Leo van Doorn was one of the speakers at the yearly meeting of the Association of Statistics in the Netherlands. There he was presenting his research on psychophysical scaling and computer assisted data collection and included in his speech also the new system we had developed, which we called Tele-interviewing because the interview was presented on the television of the respondents. He made a very convincing speech.
Professor Wansbeek, member of the board of SRF, said to me after the speech: “I can´t imagine that you don´t get commercial research for the SRF given these new developments”. Leo and I were also very optimistic.
What happened?
The first reaction came from the multinational Unilever. They invited us for a talk in Delft. We went there and discussed different possibilities. They thanked us for the information but did not provide us with a research contract. For our efforts each of us got a pot of peanut butter. On the way back we laughed a lot about it.
More serious interest came from the Foundation for Scientific Research of Consumer Issues (SWOKA). They were very interested in this research, especially, because they wanted to do a panel study on a monthly bases under a representative sample of the Dutch population with respect to income and expenditure changes. They saw in our procedure a very attractive possibility for this kind of research. However we had not done a real test with a sample of the population. Therefore they offered us a contract to do a test of the possibility of the tele-interview on the basis of a small random sample of the population. This contract included the costs for buying the equipment and the costs for the persons who had to be involved in the study.
A nice reward in this catastrophic year
This was the first contract of the SRF and a very attractive one, not only financially but also with respect to the scientific goals of the SRF. We could test a new approach for computer assisted survey research without interviewers with high quality measurement procedures which we had developed. We had not expected such a successful start of the SRF. This was a very pleasant compensation for all the problems we had experienced during this catastrophic year at the University of Amsterdam. Our choice to create the SRF seemed to be the right answer to these problems.
In November or December of that year Leo van Doorn was one of the speakers at the yearly meeting of the Association of Statistics in the Netherlands. There he was presenting his research on psychophysical scaling and computer assisted data collection and included in his speech also the new system we had developed, which we called Tele-interviewing because the interview was presented on the television of the respondents. He made a very convincing speech.
Professor Wansbeek, member of the board of SRF, said to me after the speech: “I can´t imagine that you don´t get commercial research for the SRF given these new developments”. Leo and I were also very optimistic.
What happened?
The first reaction came from the multinational Unilever. They invited us for a talk in Delft. We went there and discussed different possibilities. They thanked us for the information but did not provide us with a research contract. For our efforts each of us got a pot of peanut butter. On the way back we laughed a lot about it.
More serious interest came from the Foundation for Scientific Research of Consumer Issues (SWOKA). They were very interested in this research, especially, because they wanted to do a panel study on a monthly bases under a representative sample of the Dutch population with respect to income and expenditure changes. They saw in our procedure a very attractive possibility for this kind of research. However we had not done a real test with a sample of the population. Therefore they offered us a contract to do a test of the possibility of the tele-interview on the basis of a small random sample of the population. This contract included the costs for buying the equipment and the costs for the persons who had to be involved in the study.
A nice reward in this catastrophic year
This was the first contract of the SRF and a very attractive one, not only financially but also with respect to the scientific goals of the SRF. We could test a new approach for computer assisted survey research without interviewers with high quality measurement procedures which we had developed. We had not expected such a successful start of the SRF. This was a very pleasant compensation for all the problems we had experienced during this catastrophic year at the University of Amsterdam. Our choice to create the SRF seemed to be the right answer to these problems.