Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance in Fieldwork

Conducting fieldwork is very exacting, as any minor variation in any aspect of the data capture can easily affect the data.  This may be caused by either sampling or non-sampling error.

Non-Sampling Error

It is our belief that the quality of research depends to a large degree upon the quality of the fieldwork.  One of the main sources of non-sampling error is interviewer error and bias.

Therefore, effective staff training is considered to be crucial to achieving this quality.  Many of our executive and supervisory staff are ex-teachers and training is never compromised in the interest of cost.

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Sources of Interviewer Error and Bias, and Solutions

 

Source of Error or Bias	Solution
Cheating	High level of supervision and training High level of auditing and monitoring
Strong opinions, prejudices or expectations	Training
Error resulting from interviewer-respondent interaction	Attitudes, perceptions and motivations of both interviewer and respondent are potentially biasing.  Interviewer needs to be highly involved with the task and have low social involvement with respondent. Training
Error resulting from deviations in asking the questions.	Tone of voice, emphasis, facial expressions etc.  Training.
Error resulting from inadequate probing or over-probing	Training
Error resulting from faulty recording	Supervision and training