Quality Assurance

As a standard procedure, a Coordinator/Supervisor/Team leader accompanies 5% of all interviews conducted by each interviewer on each project. The accompaniments are spread evenly across the fieldwork period. They seek to ensure that interviewers are following all instructions and interviews are being conducted in a standard way. They form part of the training particularly for any new joiners. They are by no means a policing exercise, as Coordinator/Supervisor/Team leader will always get to do the first interview while accompanying..

While accompanying the Coordinator/Supervisor/Team leader look out for the following:

• 1. Has days work been planned effectively
• 2. Is the right approach being used or does the interviewer invite refusals
• 3. Are the interview materials well organized (questionnaires, visual aids)
• 4. Can the interviewer terminate non-effective calls tactfully, quickly and courteously
• 5. Does the interviewer know how to introduce and administer sensitive questions to the respondents without offending them e.g. Age, Income

Accompaniments present the Coordinator/Supervisor/Team leader with an ideal opportunity to assess the capabilities and potential of an interviewer. Subsequently, they complete appraisals for every interviewer that are filed and used to decide on the suitability of individual interviewers for specific projects or types of projects.

As a standard procedure, 10% of each interviewers work is back checked for every project in addition to the accompaniment. The back checks are spread evenly across the fieldwork period.

The key objectives of back checking are:

• 1.Checking the integrity of recruitment.
• 2.Checking optimum administration of questionnaire

The following items will be checked:

• 1.Sampling procedures for the household e.g. Random route
• 2.Sampling procedures within the household e.g. Kish grid
• 3.Duration of the questionnaire
• 4.Recruitment criteria (demographic, psychographic, user ship, etc.)
• 5.Specific parts of the questionnaire will be administrated again to check the consistency of answers.
• 6.Critical set of questions will be asked again: the choice of these questions will be agreed on with the project manager from the client service team.
• 7.Overall behavior of the interviewer toward the respondent.

It is the responsibility of the Coordinator/Supervisor/Team leader to do back checks however, to compliment their work; a small independent team reporting directly to the head of Operations/Project Manager is also involved.