At CSRS, we implement comprehensive quality control procedures for all of our projects to ensure the highest level of accuracy and consistency.
For telephone CATI and web-based survey projects, CSRS employs a team-based approach to minimize questionnaire design errors. Before a project begins, draft questionnaires are reviewed by the CSRS data collection manager and other key personnel. This process ensures that every aspect of the questionnaire, including wording, answer categories, question order, skip instructions, and quota specifications, is clear and accurate. If needed, CSRS conducts pretest interviews and provides you with a briefing on any issues identified during the internal pre-test.
Once the questionnaire is programmed and reviewed by the programmer, additional staff members from CSRS conduct thorough quality control checks. Management reviews the programmed CATI or web-based questionnaire question by question, comparing it to the original paper version. This review process addresses potential issues such as wording errors, answer category discrepancies, question order, skip pattern inconsistencies, and quota errors. This check is performed on both English and other language versions of the questionnaire, when applicable.
CSRS also conducts continuous quality control monitoring of all interviewers’ work. Random quality control assessments are carried out not just for new interviewers, but also for experienced team members. After each monitored interview, the CSRS research supervisory committee holds private discussions with the interviewer to address any procedural, style, or verbal errors and provide feedback for improvement. Interviewers who do not improve following ongoing feedback and additional training are removed from the project, and if necessary, from our staff entirely.
In our Data Processing department, CSRS is dedicated to delivering cross tabulations and data files that meet your exact needs. We maintain consistent communication with you throughout the process to ensure that your study requirements are met. All gathered data undergo a rigorous cleaning process that thoroughly checks for three key principles: logic, consistency, and the alignment of data with permissible options.
CSRS takes a proactive approach in involving you in the data processing, including data cleaning and coding decisions. We rely on your feedback to ensure the best possible outcomes. Our goal is to guarantee that the data is cleaned to your specifications, even offering to write customized cleaning protocols for your approval to ensure the highest quality results.
To maintain high data quality for our online survey, CSRS will implement red herring questions designed to detect inattentive respondents, AI bots, or those who are speeding through without properly reading the content. These questions serve as a crucial check to ensure that the responses collected are thoughtful and genuine. Participants who fail this check may have their responses excluded from the final analysis to preserve the integrity of the data.
