The Pen-and-Paper Personal Interview (PAPI) approach describes any survey type that uses pen-and-paper rather than digital devices to collect the information. While numerous surveys now often utilize CAPI (Computer-Assisted Personal Interviews), pen-and-paper methods offer several significant advantages over electronic methods that are likely to be important to the researcher.

Advantages of Pen-and-Paper interviews

Contrary to computer-aided interviews, pen and paper and methods require almost no technical expertise to be carried out. The implementation of the survey design can be very flexible.

This means that pen and paper surveys can be iterated very quickly on a small scale. It makes them ideal for data collection pilots, where continuous redevelopment or reorganization of surveys is needed. CAPI surveys may cause the whole survey to fail, with even little modification, which means that small iterative changes can take a lot of work.

With Pen-an-Paper questionnaires you are likely able to collect more responses as you won't be limited to a number of tablets/computers you have. You may print as many copies as your research team requires.

Disadvantages of Pen-and-Paper interviews

The main disadvantage of Pen-and-Paper interviews is data entry. If the data is being entered manually, it takes a lot of time to enter the data into the sheets or databases.

The majority of the automatic data processing solutions are expensive and require platform-specific software to be installed on the computer, which makes the Pen-and-Paper data collection less convenient.

Technology-assisted solution for Pen-and-Paper interviews

papersurvey.io provides technology for creating Pen-and-Paper forms with an automatic checkmark and handwritten text recognition.

As the software is cloud-based, so you may scan and upload your Pen-and-Paper forms to be processed automatically. The results can then be analyzed almost instantly.

Our cost-effective pricing structure is suitable for small to large organizations. Custom solutions are available for enterprise clients to support your data collection requirements by closely working with our experienced research team.

Read more about paper form data entry and create your new Pen-and-Paper form in minutes.