CSRS performs extensive quality control checks on paper questionnaires and CATI programmed questionnaires.

Draft questionnaires are reviewed by the CSRS data collection manager and other CSRS personnel prior to project start to determine if any question wording, answer categories, question order, skip instructions, or quota specifications are unclear or potentially incorrect. CSRS shares the results of this review prior to questionnaire pretesting.

CSRS strongly urges our clients to include time for a pretest of telephone survey questionnaires prior to questionnaire finalization. CSRS will complete pretest interviews and provide a briefing to our client on issues discovered during the pretest. Often CSRS provides suggestions on question wording, answer categories, question order, skip instructions and quota specifications. In addition, the pretest allows for CSRS to provide information on average interview length and net effective incidence. This information is critical to the budget process and can provide an early alert to a situation that could, if no modifications are made, impact the project cost.

For telephone CATI projects and web based survey projects, CSRS is committed to avoiding virtually all questionnaire design errors. A team approach is utilized to avoid errors.

In addition to the dedicated programmer, numerous other CSRS staff members are also responsible for quality control. The CSRS data collection department independently reviews the programmed CATI or web based questionnaire on a question by question basis against the final paper questionnaire. This review looks for wording errors, answer category errors, wording order errors, skip pattern errors, and quota errors. When appropriate this check is done on both the Spanish and English version of the programmed questionnaire.

CSRS conducts ongoing quality control monitoring of the work of all interviewers. This random quality control monitoring is done not only for relatively new research interviewers but for long term interviewers as well. Following each monitored interview, the CSRS research supervisory staff meets privately with the interviewer who has been monitored. During this private session, the aspects of the monitored interview that were done well are pointed out and reinforced. Any procedural errors, style errors, or verbal errors are also pointed out. This session is utilized as a training tool as well as a quality control tool. If it is determined that several interviewers are making similar errors on a survey, CSRS then conducts group retraining on the aspect of the interview generating the error. If only one interviewer is making the error, the CSRS supervisor will point out the error and offer positive suggestions for eliminating the error. Further monitoring of the interviewer by CSRS supervisory staff will determine if the interviewer improved based on the additional feedback and training they received. Interviewers who do not improve after ongoing feedback and additional training are removed from the project and if the situation warrants it, they are removed from our staff of interviewers.