The awards categories for this year are as follows:
IQCS Interviewer Excellence
This award celebrates an individual or team in data collection operations who have demonstrated that they go the extra mile in consistently delivering interviewing excellence.
What the judges were looking for:
- Dedication to quality
- Consistently high standard of interviewing
- Robust data-collection
- Going the extra mile to complete a challenging project or projects
- Delivering excellence to your internal/external client
The Winner Is: Transport for Greater Manchester’s Survey Research and Analysis department
The team conducts surveys in a wide range of locations, working outdoors in the most extreme of weather conditions, achieves impressive response rates within tight timescales, and they are praised for the quality of their work.
This team of 27 interviewers is described as going the extra mile every day, and on occasion well beyond their research remit. On one occasion this resulted in two interviewers providing assistance to someone giving birth at a tram stop, and on another an interviewer saw a member of the public who appeared to be in danger and waited with them until the police arrived before resuming work.
Described as dedicated, diligent, hardworking, and never missing a beat, the TFGM interviewing team comes across as close knit, caring and professional, and a worthy winner of this award.
IQCS Data Collection Excellence – Telephone
This award celebrates the best in Face to Face or Telephone Data Collection. We are looking for a case study of a recent project which you were particularly proud of, which demonstrates how your organisation achieved fieldwork excellence in completing a particularly challenging project.
What the judges were looking for:
- Robust data-collection
- High quality interviewing
- Going the extra mile to complete a challenging project
- Delivering excellence to your internal/external client
- Demonstration the importance of great quality assurance processes underpinning the data-collection process
The Winner Is: Kudos Research’s Health department
Kudos Research’s submission describes a multi-country quant and qual project comprising 300 interviews with directors and senior managers in the biotech and life sciences industry.
Having worked with their client since 2015, their experience and flexibility came to the fore when fieldwork delays had to be accommodated while still meeting a set in stone deadline, and requiring what Kudos describe as ‘almost symbiotic levels of closeness with the client’.
The findings resulted in the client taking a ‘course correction’ in the new service the research was focusing on, and Kudos has been commissioned to conduct the data collection exercise on the refined service that’s now emerged.
Their client praises their consistent, high quality service, going the extra mile, and frequently exceeding expectations
While one respondent was so impressed with the quality of their Kudos experience that their own organisation subsequently commissioned Kudos themselves, the ultimate compliment.
IQCS Data Collection Excellence – Face to Face
This award celebrates the best in Face to Face or Telephone Data Collection. We are looking for a case study of a recent project which you were particularly proud of, which demonstrates how your organisation achieved fieldwork excellence in completing a particularly challenging project.
What the judges were looking for:
- Robust data-collection
- High quality interviewing
- Going the extra mile to complete a challenging project
- Delivering excellence to your internal/external client
- Demonstration the importance of great quality assurance processes underpinning the data-collection process
The Winner Is: IPSOS UK
The winner of this year’s award for face to face data collection excellence is Ipsos for their Children of the 2020’s research programme.
Their submission describes the first wave of a new birth cohort study, with a sample of more than 8,500, and which examines how experiences and circumstances shape children’s development. This required an initial 50 minute interview with the main carer of 9 month old babies and participants to download an app to track key childhood developmental milestones. This research was all undertaken against a background of continuing concern about the safety of in-home interviewing.
An impressive 85% of interviewers were conducted face to face, 80% downloaded the app, and 89% allowed their interview data to be linked to their NHS administrative records.
Praise from a grateful and complimentary client is matched by the words of an Ipsos interviewer who says “working on Children of the 2020’s has been amazing, and I feel a real sense of having done something valuable and worthwhile“.
The quality of this project and its data collection shines through this submission, and it is a worthy winner of this award.