Quality control at A/R/M/I-Marketing is based upon the four foundation stones:

• proper training and evaluation of supervisors and interviewers
• supervision
• validation of field work
• progress monitor

Validation and supervision

Telephone interviewing

Two-step validation; supervisors call back 20-25% of respondents to verify whether a contact has taken place; office researcher calls back 5% of respondents to verify answers to the most important questions as well as the fact that all questions have been asked of the respondent.

Mall-intercept

Supervisors attend to 10-15% interviews, each respondent is asked to provide his/her telephone number and agreement to be called back by a supervisor. 20 to 25% of respondents who provided their telephone number and agreement to be called back (normally, 70-80% of the sample) are telephoned by supervisors.

Households

Supervisors check 20% of the address list or route plan points provided to interviewers; in some cases supervisors call back respondents via telephone to verify the fact of interview and completion of the questionnaire, as well as the respondent's impression of the interview length, the interviewer and ask basic demographic questions.

Supervisors are rotated among interviewers' groups to prevent possible corruption with interviewers. One or two of the supervisors are always taken from research personnel if the research takes place in Moscow or St.Petersburg.

Training and evaluation

We understand that complex techniques require specially selected and trained staff and that most research in this country is limited to very simplistic methods. Thus, each interviewer who is taken from those who have at least 2-year experience of interviewing, is trained either by the Moscow office (if it is in Moscow) or by a local supervisor (who was trained by the Moscow office).

Each interviewer is electronically evaluated by non-response rate, cost and time, number of completed interviews (ever), quality of data, and other parameters.

At the training stage, each interviewer is assessed by a team of supervisors and psychologists by his/her ability to ask complex and sensitive questions, and interpersonal skills. The interviewer database also includes three fields (quantity of negative evaluation of the interviewer by respondents, neutral, and positive) that are filled on the basis of call-backs made by supervisors.

Progress monitor

Detailed daily reports on the progress are received via e-mail in the database format and allow for a timely control over the field work and continuous feedback to supervisors.

Feedback to interviewers is always done after the completion of the project.