ABSTRACT
Over the past 25 years, western culture has experienced a dramatic shift in the conduct of daily functional transactions, replacing traditional interpersonal contact at places like banks, stores, and post offices with electronic selfadministration such as ATMs, self check-out, and automated postal centers. Online and automated telephone systems are now the norm rather than the exception for transactions such as catalog purchases, airline reservations, bill payments, and banking. Another powerful example of this shift is the increasing popularity and usage of electronic self-administered surveys such as Web-based data collection and telephone computer-automated data collection (also known as IVR, or Interactive Voice Response). These new methods of data collection offer the power and complexity of computerization combined with the privacy of self-administration. Web and IVR technologies have become increasingly popular for studying populations that have easy access to the technology and that have a high level of willingness to interact directly with computers.
