Rules for the checks
Rules of the regular research quality audit at SIMAR member agencies
1. The audit examines the way data were collected, against the project as approved by the client and against the applicable SIMAR quality standards, which set out the possible ways of verifying compliance with each standard. The parameters audited are above all:
- the target segment of the research
- sample size
- the method of selecting respondents (quota, random, purposive, self-selected poll)
- the method of data collection (face-to-face interview, telephone interviewing and so on)
- the timetable of data collection
- how the data were captured, how the interviewer network was managed and how data collection was checked
2. SIMAR also offers a research quality audit to research clients, who can thus have the quality of an agency’s data collection checked independently. The detailed audit process can be adapted to the client’s requirements. An agency that is not a SIMAR member can be audited too, where the client – as the investor in the market or public opinion research – orders this service from SIMAR.
3. The audit is carried out by an independent inspection group led by the independent expert and university lecturer PhDr. Václav Forst, CSc., together with SIMAR’s secretary Ing. Hana Svěchotová and SIMAR’s executive director Ing. Hana Huntová. The group may be joined by a further independent expert, approved in advance by the SIMAR board.
4. A research quality audit takes place at every SIMAR member agency at least once every two years. The date and the choice of agency to be checked are determined at random by the inspection group. The group may also carry out a check at an agency that has already been audited in the same year; up to five such audits – „black Peters“ – may take place in a given year.
5. All member agencies have provided SIMAR with their internal standards and an overview of their control mechanisms. These internal materials have thereby become – alongside the applicable SIMAR standards and the applicable international standards – a basis for evaluating the quality checks. Where they are updated, the agency sends SIMAR the updated version as soon as the change is made.
6. The inspection group selects any project from the list submitted of all research completed in the past six months. Every agency keeps an up-to-date, complete list of all research completed in the past six months (quantitative and qualitative, including the latest wave of tracking studies and so on). If a client does not wish a particular study to be audited, their objection must form part of that list of completed research, using a form drawn up by SIMAR.
7. The director of each member agency submits a standard declaration naming at least three members of staff with whom the inspection group may deal in the director’s absence, together with a sworn statement that the list of research completed in the past six months is complete and that it includes all completed studies, among them those the client does not wish to have checked.
8. The inspection group gives the agency a detailed list of the material that will be audited. The check, and the collection of materials and documents, take place during a visit to the agency on a working day between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. The visit is announced 24 hours in advance.
9. The inspection group must be shown, for example (where relevant to the project concerned):
- the research project as approved by the client (or the part of it relating to the subject of the checks, without the price of the research)
- documents on how respondents were selected and recruited
- the list of people interviewed
- the payroll of respondent incentives, including signatures
- a telephone, e-mail or postal contact for respondents, for possible verification on SIMAR’s behalf
- documentation of how the data were captured and checked
- a contact for the client who commissioned the research
- In qualitative research, the inspection group itself checks that participants have been entered into the SIMAR database.
10. The opening part of the audit takes place at the agency being checked. The inspection group has the right to take the documents provided away from the agency; in that case a record of their handover is signed.
11. The supporting material and the audit report are not public and are available only to members of the inspection group. Agencies being checked are not obliged to give the group information where doing so could breach contractual or statutory duties, in particular as regards the protection of trade secrets and of personal data.
12. The audit concludes with a written report on the check, containing a detailed account of the matters examined and, where shortcomings are found, recommendations for putting them right. The report states in particular whether the SIMAR/ESOMAR quality standards were observed, and whether the internal principles and control mechanisms specific to the agency were observed, as well as whether the conditions for collecting and capturing data agreed between client and agency were met. The report is sent back to the agency for comment. An agency that passes the check receives a Certificate of a successful check, which it may use in presenting itself.
13. Agencies newly joining SIMAR are obliged to supply the documentation needed for the checks, as set out in points 5 and 7, within one month of the day they became members of the association.
