Research International is one of the largest international custom research agencies, with offices in 81 different countries and over 4000 research professionals worldwide.
Research International conducts over two million face-to-face interviews annually. To continue to provide a high-value and innovative research service to its clients on a global basis, it needed to adopt advanced computer-assisted interviewing methods for its face-to-face interviewing. Early attempts to use computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) had been frustrated by software that was limited in potential and difficult for interviewers and others to use. The new techniques envisaged were beyond the scope of the technology in use.
RI adopted SPSS MR In2quest as its preferred CAPI system and developed a number of new research techniques, which it now offers to its clients as high-value branded research products.
RI has been at the forefront of developing special, branded research techniques that offer its clients the benefit of a tried, tested and benchmarked methodology. Being the world's largest custom research agency means that Research International must offer a complete range of services to its customers globally, both in how it collects the data and in how it analyzes and interprets it.
RI embraced computer-assisted data collection methods at an early stage, utilizing CATI for telephone research, and as the technology advanced, CAPI for face-to-face in some of its offices. Now, RI was keen to develop a number of exciting new research techniques that would exploit the benefits of advanced CAPI technology, but found it was constrained by the existing CAPI technology it was using from a mixture of suppliers. It chose to replace all these solutions with SPSS MR In2quest.
It is a nice environment to work in - the set up is pretty easy. Sometimes we write the questionnaire one day and start the fieldwork the next morning. If clients attend the interviewing sessions, they often take the first results with them and can have the full results in two days. Previously this would have taken a week, possibly longer.
RI's German office recognized the benefits of In2quest's full multimedia support and its ability to turn around surveys very fast. It brought these together into a new technique under the name ScreenLabSM. This proprietary technique unites qualitative and quantitative data into a single research tool and was responsible for growing $200,000 of business into over $1 million in a 12-month period. The quantitative elements of the survey provide clients with the breadth of understanding of how the market is performing, and the qualitative elements bring a depth of knowledge about what is going on in the consumer's mind. The technique is now widely used for advertising research and for concept testing, for example on new product packaging. During the early quantitative stages, questionnaires are presented to respondents for self-completion in a group interviewing situation. The moderator needs immediate access to the data in order to steer subsequent group discussions.
Sigrid Englich, RI Germany's IT Director explained: "We tried to make the process as easy as possible for the person moderating the group. This was the reason we went for In2quest. It is very successful and respondents as well as clients love it. Our clients can really see into what respondents are thinking."
Sigrid Englich has also found the software productive for those who have to set up the surveys and process the results. Setting up a new survey is now a highly streamlined process. "It is a nice environment to work in - the set up is pretty easy. Sometimes we write the questionnaire one day and start the fieldwork the next morning. If clients attend the interviewing sessions, they often take the first results with them and can have the full results in two days. Previously this would have taken a week, possibly longer."
Kiriakos Leontaridis at RI's Athens, Greece, office has also seen a tremendous growth in work since introducing ScreenLab and other CAPI techniques based on In2quest. CAPI now accounts for 80 percent of face to-face work traditionally done on paper. Leontaridis says he has been particularly impressed with the early availability of data from fieldwork and the tight integration between data collection and reporting stages. The result has been an improvement in his management of the fieldwork process. A common problem with complex studies, particularly those involving multiple countries, is ensuring that consistently high quality data is being collected throughout. It is a two-tier approach.
Kiriakos Leontaridis explained: "The quality of fieldwork is much more controlled. Better back-checking means we have uncovered things with electronic questionnaires that we would never have found out with paper - things that would have affected the quality of the data". For example, a problem with a badly worded question or an error in the routing logic could easily invalidate key findings. However, producing summaries and then taking a closer look at suspect results after the first day's interviewing means that immediate corrective action is possible.
In addition, Mr Leontaridis now provides his fieldwork supervisors with regular detailed reports on the state of each study in the field. "Monitoring fieldwork progress is now much better. Twice a week we produce a progress report for each CAPI job. This used to involve a lot of paperwork. Now we can see what is going on. In the past we could not do this, it was too much work. We counted the questionnaires but had no actual data. Now when I have 300 questionnaires I can give you all the frequency tables in less than a quarter of an hour."
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