Developing computer assisted interviewing (CAI) for the National HouseholdSurvey on Drug Abuse

The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA) is the nation's primary data source for information on the scope and dimensions of drug abuse in t he United States. To improve data collection, the NHSDA was converted to a computer-assisted interview (CAI) format in 1999. This paper reports on the research that was done to guide the conversion. The main focus of the pape r is on a large (n = 1,982) field experiment that examined different audio computer-assisted self-interviewing (ACASI) procedures in the fourth quarte r of 1997. This field experiment showed that ACASI is likely to increase re porting of drug use among youth; that respondents can, on their own, correc t inconsistencies in responses that are detected by the computer. and that ACASI eases the response task for poor readers and less well educated respo ndents.