Face-to-face interviews first, with honest notes on phone and web modes
Bharat Survey is CAPI software for research agencies, NGOs and departments that interview people face to face across Indian districts and wards. Enumerators use an offline Android app that routes questions, checks answers at the doorstep and records where and when each interview happened. Supervisors review, back-check and export. This page also explains, plainly, what we do and do not offer for telephone and web interviews.
CAPI (computer assisted personal interviewing) replaces the paper questionnaire with a form on a phone or tablet. The value is not the screen. It is that errors are caught while the respondent is still in front of the enumerator, and that each record carries evidence of how it was collected.
Questions appear in the order your routing allows. Numeric answers are checked against ranges, dates against each other, and required questions cannot be skipped. Household rosters use repeat groups, so each member gets the same block of questions without the enumerator scrolling through empty pages. Every change to a published form creates a new version, and each record stores which version it was collected on.
Before the first question, the app records arrival and consent. After the last, it records the visit outcome. Location is captured in the foreground when the enumerator taps, then compared with the assigned village or ward. Records outside the area, with poor signal, very short durations or mock GPS go to a review queue instead of the approved dataset.
Most studies we see are face to face. When a design also needs phone or web interviews, here is where Bharat Survey stands in September 2026.
The core product. Offline form engine, location evidence, shift-based work permits, supervisor QA and live progress during shifts.
Trained interviewers can record phone interviews in the same form engine, so questions and exports match your CAPI rounds. Calling lines are arranged per project. There is no built-in dialler, call recording or call scheduling module in v1.
Bharat Survey does not offer public web links for respondents to fill on their own in v1. If your design needs an online arm, we can agree a shared codebook with the tool you use so the datasets merge cleanly.
Use this to decide which mode carries each part of your sample before you look at any tool.
| Factor | CAPI (in person) | CATI (phone) | CAWI (web) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reaches rural and low-literacy respondents | Yes | Partly, needs phone numbers | Weak |
| Proof of where the interview happened | Location evidence on each record | No location, call logs only | No |
| Long questionnaires and rosters | Suits them | Fatigue after about 20 minutes | High drop-off |
| Needs a sampling frame of numbers | No | Yes | Yes, emails or links |
| Cost per completed interview | Highest | Middle | Lowest |
| What Bharat Survey offers | Software and field teams | Managed interviewers, same form engine | Not in v1 |
Costs are relative, not quoted prices. Actual cost depends on sample, geography and questionnaire length.
Web surveys are a crowded, mature category. Our effort went into the part of the survey that is hardest to verify.
Many longitudinal studies start face to face and follow up by phone. This is how that usually runs with our software and teams.
The baseline is collected in person with a full roster. Respondents who agree give a phone number for follow-ups, recorded with explicit consent.
Interviewers call the consenting households with a shorter instrument that reuses baseline IDs and codes, so answers link without manual matching.
The endline returns in person to measure outcomes that need observation or long modules, with location evidence again on each visit.
A guide to choosing an interview mode.
Learn moreForm builder, location evidence, QA and exports.
Learn moreCustom workflows on top of the core app.
Learn moreMessaging channels and their limits.
Learn moreChecklists with photos and verified locations.
Learn moreNPS and CSAT collected in person.
Learn moreStraight answers to the questions people ask most about this topic.
CAPI software runs on a device the interviewer carries to the respondent and can record location and observation. CATI software supports phone interviews, usually with call handling such as dialling and scheduling. Bharat Survey's software is built for CAPI; phone interviews use the same form engine through a managed service without a dialler.
Yes, if it is in XLSForm. Skip logic, constraints and choice lists usually carry over. We check the form during setup and tell you if any question type needs a change before the pilot.
Yes. Forms, assigned areas and consent text download before the shift. Interviews save on the phone, encrypted, and sync when the network returns. The app shows how many records are still waiting to sync.
Yes. You can license seats for your own team, or ask Bharat Survey to run fieldwork with our enumerators and supervisors on the same software. Either way the verification rules are the same.
Send the XLSForm or a draft, the states in scope and your mode plan. We will show it running on the app with location checks switched on.
