1. NASS CAPI SOLUTION Computer Assisted Personal Interview
Mobile Solution
New Techniques and Technologies for Statistics
March 2017
Pam Hird, CAPI Program Manager
United States Department of Agriculture
National Agricultural Statistics Service

2. NASS Mission and CAPI solution history
The National Agricultural Statistics Service is the primary agricultural survey data collection and dissemination arm within the United States government. Its mission focuses on providing timely, accurate, and useful statistics in service to United States agriculture. Statistical information from approximately 400 reports are provided annually on acreage, production, stocks, prices, income, the environment, conservation, demographics, and other related agricultural sectors. Publications and statistical products must reflect efficiency, effectiveness, integrity, objectivity, impartiality, utility, and confidentiality.
NASS utilizes various methods to collect survey data:  mail, telephone, personal interview, and self-administered Web instruments. With declining budgets and increasing data collection costs, NASS pursued innovative ways to leverage technology to collect data more efficiently and effectively. In 2009, NASS outlined several efficiency initiatives in response to the President’s edict to streamline business processes and maximize cost savings within the Federal sector. One of the initiatives involved collecting data remotely through a computer device and transmitting the data in a timely manner. A new solution was developed and put into production in The resulting mobile solution revolutionized NASS’ data collection processes and catapulted NASS to the forefront as a pioneer in mobile technology.
Today, The CAPI program supports a customer base of 3,000+ enumerators, over 800 NASS employees and accounts for approximately 30% of data collected from more than 300 surveys conducted on an annual basis as well as the Census of Agriculture.

3. Mobile Optimized Survey Tool
Current CAPI Solution
Mobile Optimized Survey Tool
Fully engineered and developed a completely new solution that incorporated the previous CAPI functionality but used new technical advancements to mitigate cellular signal coverage while adhering to the original terms for security requirements, no data will be stored on the hard drive of the mobile device.
The resulting solution, MOST, downloads an enumerator’s entire sample to the RAM of the mobile device and improves the customer experience by having all questionnaires available immediately with no lag time. This feature also reduces respondent burden by decreasing interview time which is very significant since several hundred thousands of respondents participate in NASS surveys each year.
Once cellular or WiFi coverage becomes available, the data automatically transfers to the NASS database and wipes the data from the mobile device. This feature opens the door for enumerators to collect data via a mobile device anywhere.
Data is collected more efficiently and effectively, minimizing the need for paper questionnaires while improving the quality of the data through automated edit checks.
The customer experience (both internal and external) is improved through utilization of the latest survey methodological procedures and features the addition of automated guides, sum fields and routing logic to answer questions pertinent to the respondent thus reducing interview time.  
A new mapping feature was added that automatically maps the best route to respondents selected for the day. This feature gives turn by turn directions to the enumerators decreasing driving time and mileage.

4. Mobile Optimized Survey Tool (cont’d)
Current CAPI Solution
Mobile Optimized Survey Tool (cont’d)
The automated sample assignment page was redesigned with additional sorting capabilities allowing the enumerators to group coordinated surveys and operations in a variety of ways. Through the flexibility afforded by multiple sorting functions, the enumerator can custom design their assignment sheet to effectively manage surveys with different data collection time frames while reducing respondent burden by collecting data for multiple surveys in one visit. Supervisors can track and reassign workloads through the summary function and insure that all data is collected within the data collection timeframes. Supervisors have the ability to view surveys collected by enumerators under their supervision and perform quality control checks on the data collected. This improves the customer experience as enumerators and supervisors have more features to manage the sample effectively and complete data collection on time.
A new software feature was added which allows for item level comments. This feature attaches a comment to the appropriate item code allowing the enumerator to document issues item level data more effectively. This feature provides untold benefits for NASS Statisticians as they edit the data and set estimates based on the data collected by enumerators. Through the use of the item level comment feature, data quality has increased significantly and estimates more accurately represent the indications derived from the data. Estimates and indications published from NASS directly impact the entire US Agricultural community and any effort to improve data quality and more accurately represent the data provides immeasurable benefits to the US Agricultural economy.

5. Mobile Optimized Survey Tool (cont’d)
Current CAPI Solution
Mobile Optimized Survey Tool (cont’d)
The automated sample assignment page was redesigned with additional sorting capabilities allowing the enumerators to group coordinated surveys and operations in a variety of ways. Through the flexibility afforded by multiple sorting functions, the enumerator can custom design their assignment sheet to effectively manage surveys with different data collection time frames while reducing respondent burden by collecting data for multiple surveys in one visit. Supervisors can track and reassign workloads through the summary function and insure that all data is collected within the data collection timeframes. Supervisors have the ability to view surveys collected by enumerators under their supervision and perform quality control checks on the data collected. This improves the customer experience as enumerators and supervisors have more features to manage the sample effectively and complete data collection on time.
A new software feature was added which allows for item level comments. This feature attaches a comment to the appropriate item code allowing the enumerator to document issues item level data more effectively. This feature provides untold benefits for NASS Statisticians as they edit the data and set estimates based on the data collected by enumerators. Through the use of the item level comment feature, data quality has increased significantly and estimates more accurately represent the indications derived from the data. Estimates and indications published from NASS directly impact the entire US Agricultural community and any effort to improve data quality and more accurately represent the data provides immeasurable benefits to the US Agricultural economy.

6. June Area Survey
The June Area Survey (JAS) is one of the most important surveys conducted at NASS and is the backbone to the NASS Ag Statistics program. It provides key indications for acreage, number of farms and land in farms, land values, cash rents, and is the NOL component for the July Cattle survey. The JAS measures the incompleteness of the NASS List Frame and provides coverage measures used for the NASS Red Book. Area tracts identified as not on a NASS list are sub-sampled for follow-on surveys, which collect farm level data only. In addition, the survey identifies sample fields for the Corn, Soybean, and Cotton Objective Yield surveys.
Every five years additional sampling units are added to the JAS for the Agricultural Coverage Evaluation Survey (ACES). Data collected from the JAS segments, in combination with the additional ACES segments, is used to measure the completeness of the Census of Agriculture mail list. The Not on Mail List (NML) estimates are used to weight census data at the record level to produce coverage-adjusted estimates.

7. DEMO

8. Conclusion
The MOST solution optimizes data collection and security by being able to work fully offline without storing any data on the device hard drive
The management features in MOST allow enumerators to manage their assignments using sort and group options, summary view, and the mapping features
The mapping feature within MOST provides turn by turn directions for the most optimized driving direction between up to 8 points
Item level comments give enumerators the ability to comment on a specific item within a questionnaire and those comments stay attached to that data item throughout all downstream processes