A computer-aided digital audio recording and encoding system for improving the encoding of verbal reports.

The increasing use of verbal reports in psychological research requires tools for improving the ease and reliability of collecting and coding verbal report data. An approach is described that maintains the verbal report data in digitally recorded audio form throughout the collecting and encoding processes. A new computer-aided encoding tool, CAPAS, is described, which randomly selects and plays individual protocol segments and stores computer keyboard-entered codes in an SPSS-formatted data file.