- Last Updated October 20, 2026
Computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) has grown to be an established survey research method. Here's how to get started.
When you’re collecting primary data, you can choose from a variety of data collection methods, including:
- In-person interviews
- Video interviews
- Computer-assisted personal interviews (CAPI)
- Computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI)
CATI is the method you can use to conduct a survey on mobile phones. In this blog post, we’ll walk you through the basics of CATI, and provide guidance on what to consider when choosing CATI software.
We’ve also included a link to our free CATI starter kit and a comprehensive list of CATI resources toward the bottom of this page.
What is CATI?
Computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) is a telephone surveying technique in which the interviewer follows a script provided by a survey software platform like SurveyCTO.
CATI is similar to another surveying technique called CAPI (computer-assisted personal interviewing). With CAPI, instead of the interview being conducted over the phone, a data collector conducts the interview in person and uses an electronic device, like a mobile phone or tablet, to record a respondent’s answers to a set of questions.
CATI and CAPI are two of the most popular person-to-person data collection methods.
You can use CATI as an alternative or replacement for CAPI in data collection projects that value the personal aspect of in-person interviews, but have limitations or needs that make in-person interviewing difficult.
For example, maybe you need to reach populations in remote areas. Or, perhaps you want to interview a very high volume of respondents, making in-person interviews time-consuming and costly. In some cases, health or other concerns might prevent a field team from meeting with respondents in person. In these situations, CATI may be a suitable alternative for other survey research methods.
How do CATI surveys work?
A typical CATI survey workflow follows the same core steps, whether your team calls from a central office or from home:
- Assign respondents and their cases to interviewers, so each interviewer knows who to call next
- Dial respondents directly from the CATI platform to keep activity logs centralized
- Follow the survey script while skip logic and validation rules to route questions and catch errors
- Record each call’s outcome and reschedule callbacks when respondents aren’t available
- Sync data to the server so you can monitor progress and data quality in real time
Next, we’ll go into detail on some specific situations where CATI can be the best data collection method.
Advantages and disadvantages of CATI surveys
Advantages of CATI
CATI may be the right data collection method when your priorities are moving quickly and keeping costs down. Some respondents and survey enumerators also prefer it over other methods. Here are the advantages CATI offers:
- It’s fast. It’s easier and more efficient to conduct interviews over the phone than in person.
- It’s cost-effective. CATI cuts down on travel costs and other costs associated with sending interviewers to meet with respondents in-person. A 2026 World Bank working paper found that in six African countries, in-person interviews cost roughly 30 times more per completed household interview than phone interviews.
- It’s efficient. A CATI survey allows organizations to conduct interviews from a central location, which can streamline operations and help with some types of quality control.
- It can be safer. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, CATI allowed organizations to continue data collection projects to combat the health risks of meeting in person. It can also be safer to call respondents who may live in areas affected by conflict or natural disasters.
- It can make respondents more comfortable. Some respondents find phone interviews to be less intrusive than meeting in person, especially if they’re being asked sensitive questions.
- It can be easier to accommodate. It’s often easier for respondents to take a phone call alongside other responsibilities, like work and caretaking, than to sit down with an enumerator for an in-person interview.
Challenges of CATI
On the other hand, depending on your project needs and constraints, CATI has some disadvantages compared to other types of interviewing.
Let’s look at some of the challenges you’ll have to overcome when implementing CATI interviews:
- Interviewer training can be challenging. If you’re conducting training virtually, training survey facilitators to do phone interviews can be difficult, since there’s additional steps they need to take on their devices for CATI. (Good news: We have resources below to help you be successful in training for CATI, even with remote training.)
- Certain types of quality control can be more difficult. Without the personal contact of in-person interviews, it can be more difficult to verify the identity of the respondent on the other end of the phone. Stakeholders and/or clients you collect data for might not trust CATI as much as CAPI for this reason. If you and your clients value high-quality data, make sure your data collection tool has quality control features that help you monitor data quality for CATI surveys.
- CATI limits a survey sample. Phone access still isn’t universal. According to ITU’s 2025 Facts and Figures report, while 82% of people aged 10 and older own a mobile phone globally, only 53% do in low-income economies. The same 2026 World Bank working paper cited earlier also notes that in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), phone ownership skews toward wealthier, more educated, male, and urban households. This can impact who you’re able to collect data from, potentially introducing bias in your research. It’s especially important to be rigorous with your sampling practices if you work in LMICs and want to use CATI exclusively for your data collection. One potential solution here can be mixed-mode surveys, where you use both CATI and CAPI.
Every survey method has pros and cons for different projects, so it’s crucial to really consider the above advantages and disadvantages when designing your data collection plan.
If you do decide that the advantages of CATI make it the best fit for your data collection needs, you’re ready to move on to another critical step: selecting the right mobile data collection tool for CATI surveys.
Choosing your CATI survey software
It’s always important to know your goals and your method of data collection before choosing which tool you’ll use for data collection. If CATI is going to be your data collection method, here are a few questions to ask yourself when choosing a tool:
- Are you using mobile devices or web calling? One way to run a project out of a central location is to use web calling, where enumerators call respondents while using a laptop or desktop computer to display the script and record answers. But if you want your enumerators to work remotely and conduct CATI interviews over mobile phones, and use an attached headset to listen to respondents while recording answers on the device, your CATI tool must be designed to support this workflow.
- Does your CATI tool integrate with third-party apps? If your project needs in-platform support for features like call masking and call recording, look for tools that integrate with telephone companies like Exotel and Twilio. If you want to schedule callback times for respondents on enumerators’ calendars, look for platforms that integrate with automation tools like Zapier.
- Does it offer the right features for phone survey data quality control? High-quality data is vital no matter what survey research method you’re using. If you’re using phone surveys, you might have additional concerns about data accuracy and authenticity. Look for platforms with built-in features that help control the quality of surveys conducted over the phone, like audio audits and phone call logging
Organizations and universities around the world use SurveyCTO to carry out CATI because we’ve built our CATI features with the above concerns in mind. We also have additional capabilities that you can integrate with our CATI features to further streamline your CATI workflow. Those features are:
- CATI plug-ins: The phone-call plug-in allows enumerators to dial respondents directly from the survey using the SurveyCTO Collect app, without needing access to the respondent’s telephone number. We also offer a “launch-sms” plug-in that launches the SMS application on Android devices and populates it with a phone number and message, ready to be sent by the enumerator to easily schedule a call.
- Remote device management: If you’re running a CATI research project and onboarding enumerators remotely so that they can carry out phone interviews from their home, SurveyCTO lets you configure their devices remotely, eliminating errors and speeding up onboarding.
- Easy assignment of respondents and their contact information: You can easily manage respondents and assign them to the correct survey facilitator by incorporating SurveyCTO’s case management functionality into your CATI workflow.
How does CATI compare to CAWI and online surveys?
Computer-assisted web interviewing (CAWI) is the method behind most web surveys: Respondents open a link and complete a form online, usually without an interviewer.
In practice, the tradeoffs you’ll weigh often look like this:
- With CAWI, you can often scale faster, reach a global audience, and do so at lower cost, since no one needs to place calls or conduct surveys in person. However, you are limited to areas with internet access.
- With CAPI, you benefit from the depth of detail as well as the ability to clarify questions and probe further into unclear answers that only come with in-person interviewing. However, this is often a more cost-intensive method than the other two.
- With CATI, you get the best of both worlds by having an interviewer guide a respondent through a survey as well as being able to reach a broader audience than CAPI. However, it can be increasingly difficult to get respondents to pick up phones and an inability to show images or videos.
Respondent answers can also differ by the method you use. The same question may get a different response when someone reads it on a screen than when they hear it from an interviewer.
With web surveys in particular, identity and fraud is often a bigger concern. Pew Research Center’s 2026 analysis found that bogus respondents mainly threaten online opt-in polls in the U.S.
If you want the reach of the web and the personal touch of phone interviews, you can combine both in a mixed-mode design. Whichever modes you choose, SurveyCTO data quality tools help you flag issues in real time.
Use our free CATI survey template to get up and running with phone surveys
Whether you’re new to data collection or transitioning from in-person fieldwork to phone surveys, getting your CATI workflow set up as easily as possible is important to your project’s success,.
We want users to employ the best-fit method for their needs, and our goal is to provide the support and tools to make that possible.
The CATI starter kit offers an efficient and scalable approach to using SurveyCTO as a CATI solution. View the starter kit for guidance on the following:
- Base requirements, such as contact details, hardware, and third party services
- Adapting your survey instruments and adding your questions into SurveyCTO CATI templates
- Training your team remotely
- Collecting high quality data
- Monitoring your project’s progress with sample Google Sheets dashboards and other external tools
- Setting up automatically generated calendar events to organize your work via Zapier and other ways of augmenting your CATI system
The starter kit also contains resource folders with downloadable sample forms and datasets that you can customize for your project. It gives you plenty of flexibility to build the CATI workflow your project needs. If you’re new to CATI and want help setting it up, SurveyCTO’s global team of experts is available 24/7 to answer your questions.
In the CATI starter kit, SurveyCTO users can access and download a full working sample for both basic and advanced scenarios, with the following components:
- Workflow that incorporates case management, publishing form data into server datasets, and pre-loading to organize the process of assigning cases to enumerators and contacting respondents, while automatically discontinuing contact attempts when appropriate
- The advanced sample allows for capturing multiple phone numbers for respondents, the best number to use, and the numbers not to use, and offers more flexibility for rescheduling calls
- Sample form and records to populate the cases dataset
- “Phone-call” field plug-in that launches the phone dialer application on Android devices and populates it with a phone number, ready to be called by the user
- “Launch-sms” field plug-in that launches the SMS application on Android devices and populates it with a phone number and message, ready to be sent by the user
Each version of the working samples contains two different options for setting up your workflow: One that uses SurveyCTO’s case management features, and one that does not. Each of these options has its own resource folder with downloadable sample forms and a replicable dashboard to get you started collecting and visualizing data.
We continue to update this starter kit as additional resources become available. To receive notifications about improvements, please follow the instructions in the guide on using the starter kit. You can also watch this video which presents an overview of the SurveyCTO platform and the CATI starter kit.
CATI survey resources from leaders in development, research, and monitoring and evaluation (M&E)
We’ve compiled a helpful list of reputable CATI resources. Global leaders in digital data collection and research have developed invaluable guides on how to transition fieldwork from in-person to phone surveying. They cover topics such as:
- Reconceptualizing and shortening survey forms
- Retraining staff
- Adapting project management
- Monitoring for data quality
CATI transition resources:
The Busara Center for Behavioral Economics
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health (ICAP)
60 Decibels
Need help?
Need help with CATI or any other issue? Our support team is available 24×7 for SurveyCTO users. Go to the Support Center and click on the link to Submit a support request. No question is too small.
Learn about the CATI starter kit and experience our CATI functionality firsthand.
Frequently asked questions
What does CATI stand for?
CATI stands for computer-assisted telephone interviewing. In a CATI survey, an interviewer calls a respondent and reads questions from a script that survey software displays on screen.
As the respondent answers, the interviewer records each response on a phone, tablet, or computer, so you capture data digitally during the call.
What's the difference between CATI and CAPI?
Both methods use survey software to guide an interviewer through a script, but the setting differs:
- With CAPI, an enumerator meets the respondent in person and records answers on a mobile phone or tablet.
- With CATI, the interview happens over the phone, which can cut travel costs and help you reach broader populations.
What's the difference between CATI and CAWI?
CATI is interviewer-administered: A trained interviewer calls each respondent, reads the questions, and records the answers.
CAWI is almost always self-administered, so respondents complete a web-based survey on their own. Because the experience differs, the same question can produce different answers in each mode. Keep this in mind if you plan to combine or compare modes.
Are CATI surveys still relevant?
Yes. CATI remains a practical choice, especially when travel to respondents is costly or unsafe. The World Bank’s 2026 working paper mentioned in the main article above mentions that in-person surveys cost around 30 times more to complete.
Additionally, a 2026 Public Opinion Quarterly report of CATI in low- and middle-income countries found CATI to be the most accurate when used in middle-income countries and when measuring straightforward concepts with simple response options.
