• All respondents to be recruited using a screening questionnaire/ recruitment questionnaire which should be approved by the client, along with the discussion guide.

• A tight control is exercised to ensure that we are not representing only a group of friends/ acquaintances in the sample. The following guidelines are followed:

  • All respondents must be in quota as specified in the brief, or as subsequently modified by the client.

  • Respondents should not be involved in market research, marketing, advertising, public relations, journalism and of course the clients’ line of business, i.e. they themselves or their close friends or relatives should not be working in these professions.

  • Respondents should not have been interviewed or attended focus groups for market research projects in the last six months or responded to any market research enquiry on the research subject in the past one year.

  • Respondents should not be within the immediate social circle of the recruiter i.e. same family, same house or close friends.

  • Couples attending the groups should not be acquainted with other couples.

  • At least two recruiters should work to recruit one focus group.

  • No more than two respondents should be recruited from the same neighbourhood, unless the research demands it. No more than two respondents participating in the research study should work or have members working in the same company/ organisation – if it is a large organisation.

  • A full group must have 6 to 8 respondents and a mini group must have 4 to 5 respondents.
    

• Recruitment questionnaires are made available for inspection whenever the client requests.

Briefing for qualitative research

• The client usually briefs all executives and moderators working on a project through a meeting or via conference call

• If the research executive in charge of the project is not personally moderating any part of the project, then he/she will personally brief Arab speaking moderators

• All research executives are either English speaking or Bilingual (English and Arabic)

• Moderators in some locations may be Arabic only speaking

During Field

• Field Supervision / Spot Checks / Field Accompaniments

• Done at various stages of the fieldwork to maintain quality

• Back Checks – 15%-20% of the Total Sample

• Every Transcriber’s work is back-checked by the Field Supervisor for all Qualitative studies

Interview quality checks

• On a first assignment, each interviewer is accompanied by one of the fieldwork supervisors.

• As per FEEDBACK’s standard quality assurance system, a portion of each interviewer’s work is selected for checking. These quality checks are conducted to ensure that:

  • Interviews were carried out with properly selected respondents.

  • Interviews were conducted in accordance with the project’s instructions.

  • Show cards and other materials to be shown to respondents were used correctly (face-to-face interviews).

  • A number of questions, normally questions of fact rather than opinion, are re-asked to establish consistency of response.

• In instances where a particular interviewer’s selection of respondents or quality of interviewing appears dubious, all of that interviewer’s work is examined. If it is established that the interviewer’s work is poor, his/her entire assignment is rejected and replaced.

• We control the sample quota on daily basis in order to ensure that the number of interviews decided at the project design stage is completed successfully.

• On a standard basis 30% of all our fieldwork is back-checked of which 20% is done through telephones and 10% are done through personal visits or accompanied checks by the project supervisor (in case of F2F studies). For CATI studies, at least 15-20% of the work is checked onsite by a supervisor / Field Executive / Field Manager. A large proportion of interviews are back-checked for new interviewers to ensure adherence to quality standards.
  

• Accompaniments/back-checks done by:

  • Supervisor

  • Field Executive / Field Manager

  • At least 10% per interviewer, 30% of the sample

  • 5% of each interviewer’s work will be checked onsite by a supervisor for F2F studies and 15-20% in case of CATI studies

Post Field

• Data Validation

• Logic Checks

• Random re-punch

Logic & Accuracy checks

• A consistency & logic check is carried out on all the questionnaires to ensure that the questionnaires had been administered correctly.

• After ensuring that the fieldwork is error free the data is punched into the computers. At this stage we ensure quality assurance by two methods:

  • Validation Checks – Our punching program contains logical checks.

  • 10% of the punched questionnaires are randomly checked for possible punching errors. If any error is spotted, a much larger proportion of questionnaires are then checked.

• After the data is processed, the analyzing researcher conducts certain logic checks to ensure that there are no processing errors. For example, if 75% of the population have use Brand X in the past 1 week, then it would be wrong if 50% of the population are aware of that brand.

• Processing is done using Quantum which is the industry standard.

Qualitative fieldwork quality checks

Feedback will supply copies of the audiotapes from the group discussions on request from the client. To ensure that we are not compromised in doing so, respondents will be told, in advance, when recruited that the group will be tape – recorded and that the tape will be listened to, in confidence, by qualified research staff. In occasional circumstances when respondents such as rural C2D women, stipulate that only other females would listen to the tape, this would be stated on the tape and only female executives of feedback would listen to those tapes.