FGI has a field force of approximately 214 field agents placed nationally across South Africa, all utilising handheld mobile PDAs which utilise cellular GPRS network. Due to our field agents being located across the country (rural, urban and peri-urban) we are able to offer affordable rural samples and quick access to these areas. Added to this interviewers are part of the local community, have better rapport with the respondents as well as are able to talk to them in the local vernacular.

Through our relationship with Primedia we have access to convergence points such as taxi ranks and shopping malls and student campuses where many research companies are not permitted.

Data is uploaded after every 5 interviews to ensure a fast turnaround time as well as to pick up any quality issues or concerns early. The PDAs have built in quality controls such as routing instructions that do not allow missing fields or the interviewer to continue should the correct amount of fields not be completed. The mobile devices automatically capture GPS coordinates of where the interview was conducted, which allows us to monitor where interviews were conducted and ensure that these match the sampling points specified by the research.

Other functionality on the devices is that we can contact the interviewers via SMS with any further information/instructions. Interviewers can also SMS us for support should they have any queries or issues.

Another benefit of using the handheld mobile devices is that pictures can be taken of each respondent, this is a quality check as well as an added value to the client. Pictures of the respondents can be incorporated in the presentation giving clients a visual image of who their clients are and some idea of their surroundings.

The software that we use allows us to change questionnaires on the fly while in field. What does this mean for our clients? While we are in field we have the ability to look at results and see where additional probing or insights may be obtained, we simply change the questionnaire and for the remainder of the sample are able to gather the in-depth information.