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How to join

We are accepting member applications throughout the year and we are very happy to schedule an advisory visit in for you. Please contact Gill to discuss this and any questions you may have.

Anyone who can demonstrate they have been working in the spirit of the standards for at least three months is able to apply for inspection and membership.

Current membership comprises a range of companies of all sizes, and from all over England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

IQCS supplier membership

ISO20252 registered companies that do not want to benefit from an IQCS audit apply here.

Companies, with or without ISO20252 registration, that want to benefit from an IQCS audit apply here.

IQCS user membership

For more information on IQCS user membership please visit the user member’s information page.

IQCS supplier membership.

Choose between full membership and member only membership.

Full members

Enjoy all the benefits of membership and have their fieldwork annually assessed and accredited by our independent inspectors. Some of our full members are also ISO 20252 registered and opt to be inspected by the IQCS in addition to this. Benefits are a thorough inspection by very experienced auditors, advice on how to improve procedures, detailed feedback, a clear flag in the members directory and a much more quality focused team. Member companies take IQCS inspections very seriously and feed auditors’ comments back to their teams.

Member Only

Companies enjoy all the benefits of membership, but are not assessed by the IQCS. Member only companies are ISO 20252 registered, audited by an independent body such as the MQA and do not want to be inspected by the IQCS. Some of the biggest players in the industry are and have been members for many years and for good reasons.

Both tiers of membership provide the unique opportunity to input into the standards and help maintain the currency and relevance of these to the contemporary fieldwork environment.

Advisory visits

Companies new to quality standards often opt for an advisory visit before they officially apply to IQCS membership. In order to help prepare companies for the initial inspection and membership, we can arrange an advisory visit to provide advice and assistance on what is required in order to meet the IQCS benchmark standards.

Feedback from members has been very positive in relation to advisory visits and we do strongly advise anyone new to IQCS or ISO20252 to take advantage of this facility as an initial stage towards interviewer administered data-collection quality control procedures.

The Inspection process

Full Member companies are audited annually by one of our elected inspectors, all of whom have years of market research operational experience behind them, and proven professional competence. They are able to bring a wealth of industry knowledge and experience to bear throughout the inspection process.

All inspection reports are submitted to a judging panel of IQCS Council members. These reports are in an unattributed format to maintain individual company anonymity and the panel review the inspectors’ comments on the inspection and make a final decision on grading.

By having all inspections reviewed by a central panel, the IQCS Council is able to identify any common trends or shortfalls across the inspected companies, and recommend any necessary amendments to the existing standard or changes to the inspection process as a result.