Using Existing Case Mode (phone says data record)

The main idea behind existing case mode is that when the phone number is delivered to Survent it has a pointer to an existing data case in the TR file and that case is loaded into the data buffer along with the phone number. The Case ID of the data case that is wanted needs to be stored in 25.x of the sample record where x is the length of the Case ID field.

Here is a list of some of the possible applications.

1. You want to have a data record for every phone record.
2. You want suspends to have a data record, but want that data record updated if the interview is resumed.
3. You have more than 4900 characters of existing data in the sample records.
4. You have a “call back” study where you are contacting the same respondents from an earlier wave and want access to their original data.
5. You have a study where different respondents will answer different sections of the study and do not want to have to use suspend/resume (and its associated issues) between each section.

There are 2 distinct ways to set this up.

1. You create the tr file at the same time you build your raw sample file and assign the Case ID to the data records and store that Case ID in the raw sample records. See the attached zip file existing_case_mode.zip for an example of how to set this up. The tr file will need to be in the live data directory prior to the start of interviewing.
2. You store the data record during the interviewing process the first time you need it. See the attached zip file existing_case_notr.zip for an example of how to set this up.

There is a notes file in each zip file that explains how to get the example to run.