Occupation Coding During the Interview

Summary Currently, most surveys ask for occupation with open-ended questions. The verbal responses are coded afterwards, which is error prone and expensive. We present an alternative approach that allows occupation coding during the interview. Our new technique uses a supervised learning algorithm to predict candidate job categories. These suggestions are presented to the respondent, who in turn can choose the most appropriate occupation. 72.4% of the respondents selected an occupation when the new instrument was tested in a telephone survey, entailing potential cost savings. To aid further improvements, we identify some factors for how to increase quality and to reduce interview duration.