THE QUESTIONNAIRE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE (QPL) - AN OVERVIEW WITH EXAMPLES OF CALL MANAGEMENT

The Questionnaire Programming Language (QPL) software provides a relat ively easy, quick, and reliable way to automate surveys. QPL was produ ced by Kevin Dooley and associates at the U.S. General Accounting Offi ce and is a public-domain program. QPL is useful for conducting small- to large-scale computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) and se lf-administered questionnaire surveys. It also is useful for data entr y and automated production of spss or SAS data definition files. In th is article the QPL system is described with some example of how it has been used. These examples include a survey conducted in an instructio nal context. Particular emphasis is given to how to implement call man agement with ''control'' files of telephone numbers.