FGI – utilizes the most advanced telephonic and research systems available world-wide. The telephonic system runs on a Linux Asterisk switch. All interviewers have “soft phones” on their screens, as shown below. The system can also conduct video interviews. All interviews are voice logged (recorded) which eliminates the need for back checks on the work of interviewers. The field manager has the ability to listen in to any interview and track interviewer performance. Voice logs (WAV files) of every nth interview can be e-mailed to you for quality control purposes.

All telephone research is conducted on a CATI (Computer Aided Telephone Interview) system. Sugar CRM, with a link to Survey Systems for reporting is used. VoIP technology is utilized to conduct both local and world-wide research at reduced telephone rates. Routing is built in to the questionnaire to ensure that respondents only answer questions relevant to them.

• Data Cleaning: The first step in large sample jobs is to ensure that data is cleaned. By obtaining most up to date telephone numbers as well as having multiple contact numbers ensures that the job will go smoothly and that respondent substitution rates will be minimized.
• Sample Structure & Quotas: This is the most important step of the entire project. The basic premise of all research that if it is going to be representative of the universe all respondents must have an “equal and known chance of being selected”.
• Interviewer Briefing: All our interviewers are trained and experienced. But before any project all interviewers from both the part-time evening shifts and the full time day shifts will receive a comprehensive briefing on the project.
• The Interview: Each interviewer is then assigned a list of names with chosen respondents highlighted. Interviews are conducted in respondent’s language of choice. All interviewers are bilingual and some full time daytime ones are trilingual. Even so, Afrikaans interviewers are assigned predominantly Afrikaans areas and so forth. Results are analyzed in total and by shift and individual interviewers to determine any bias. Teams of 6 interviewers are each assigned a supervisor who, in addition to the field manager listens to the interviews and coaches and mentors interviewers who may be “leading” respondents. Interviewers use computer key boards and soft phones together with the Sugar system and questionnaire which is published on their screens. Interviewers are remunerated with a basic salary and a performance bonus, based on accuracy and quality of interviews, not only number of interviews completed. After 50 or 100 interviews, any open ended questions that have been captured verbatim are coded and edited and these new codes are then included into the system. This is then repeated after a further 200 interviews. In this way open ended questions become close enders.