Market Research Support

Telephone Interviewing, Back-Coding from Verbatims, CATI Software and Specwriting

Telephone Interviewing

I've been a telephone interviewer since October 1983 (at NOP Telequest), and I've also worked as a supervisor at NOP, running the Telephone Omnibus there for five years. I was then a supervisor at what was then Online Telephone Surveys (MORI's telephone research subsidiary) and then Manager of the telephone centre there. I was also a trainer of telephone interviewers to IQCS standards, having trained literally thousands of people over the years. I wrote the NOP telephone interviewer training manual, and I also trained Ben Page (now CEO of Ipsos MORI) as well as other luminaries.

I can offer you telephone interviewing services from my home office.

I am able to offer:

Free phone calls to the UK (no phone charges with VOIP) and much reduced international call charges
Standards to MRS and IQCS
CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing) ensures perfect data matching for analysis
Recordings of all interviews available on any project (subject to respondent agreement and data protection laws)
Back-coding from verbatim responses into a code frame
Back-check callbacks (5% - 10% of sample size quality control)

Taking everything into consideration, this is a mini CATI-based field & tab agency in its own right, yet at a fraction of the cost of conventional overhead-heavy agencies.

CATI Specwriting, Data Prep and Analysis

After using Quancept at both NOP and Online/MORI, I went to Research & Auditing Services and was very pleased to discover that the software in use there was DKapture, which handles very much like Quancept from the point of view of the interviewer (ease of coding responses and verbatims and worry-free routeing) and supervisor (sample management, interviewer/file identification, etc.), but from the point of view of the specwriter it is extremely intuitive, unlike Quancept.

DKapture is also very attractive to the business owner as well. Having been a specwriter using both software packages, I can say that DKapture can do everything that the mighty Quancept can do, except that it costs a fraction of the price. DKapture runs on DOS or Windows (a web version is now also available) so there is no Unix specialist to retain which is another saving. The owners of small MR agencies and fieldwork companies, and also consultants, now have their own CATI systems within financial reach.

In fact, it's so easy to use that in some cases you won't even need a specwriter (although an experienced specwriter is recommended, and I'd be happy to help out).

If you'd like to know more, either about my telephone interviewing services or about DKapture, please use the web form below.