Ensuring Data Quality: What Criteria Do Monitors Use to Rate Interviewers?

Abstract

Like most survey research organizations, Mathematica Policy Research monitors telephone interviewers to ensure that they collect high-quality data. Monitors identify problems with survey questions, recommend interviewing techniques, and retrain interviewers whose performance do not meet expectations. Because monitoring is a critical quality assurance tool, we are interested in understanding the behavior of monitors – specifically, their ability to provide effective and consistent feedback on interviewers’ performance. Mathematica implements several best practices to promote monitoring consistency: