Our expertise and innovative solutions help in providing quick, authentic and cost-effective surveys across India. CDCR engages in both digital and paper-based data collection. Decisions on whether to conduct digital or paper-based surveys are undertaken based on the client's needs, nature of the survey, length of questionnaire and budget for the exercise. We administer these surveys through in-person or remote using tablets and smartphones. We follow rigorous data quality control and ethical protocols to ensure smooth and error-free data collection.
We have our own inhouse team of experienced qualitative researchers from a multidisciplinary background who are adept in interviewing multiple stakeholders. We conduct and design tools for Focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observations. Our researchers are experienced in the handling interviews involving sensitive questions on sexual and reproductive health, caste-based discrimination, domestic violence etc.
Some of our researchers have gone through months of rural immersion programmes. We value an immersive experience of the community and location while conducting these interviews. Unlike conventional qualitative data collection, we don't ignore the researcher's subjectivity and emphasise on putting the observations pertaining to the interview setting, village profile and researchers' opinion in our field notes.
We are closely involved with our clients during the inception stage of the projects. We spend a considerable amount of time to fully understand the project requirements and identifying a suitable survey methodology and sampling without compromising the validity of the sample while keeping in mind the budgetary limitations. We draft the questionnaires and translate them into the local language, pre-test and pilot test the tools, and submit a pretest report along with final suggestions and a plan of action before deployment.
Our field team come from an experience of conducting social surveys. These are individuals who have local context, understand the language and local inuendos, caste/gender differences and individuals who bring a breadth of background knowledge to the subject under study. We provide them classroom or virtual field training and blend our training sessions with an orientation about the program objectives, knowledge about the methodological diligence, field plan, probing techniques customized in accordance to the surveys, ethical and quality protocols etc. Apart from this we also provide technical training on the use of CAPI software and smartphones.
We prepare detailed and extensive training manuals and aids for every study to ensure clarity and standardization in data collection. The training materials are developed in both English and relevant local languages. We base our training material on our existing pool of standardized and field-tested basic terms, definitions, concepts and probing techniques.
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