Data Quality: The Foundation of Insight
RTi employs rigorous data quality standards, and has been at the forefront of addressing data quality assurance issues for over 30 years. Leaders at RTi continue to be involved in industry-wide Data Quality Assurance initiatives.
- Mel Rothstein (RTi Chairman/CEO) – Past Chairman of CASRO and current member of Data Quality Assurance taskforce
- Janet Baldi (RTi Vice President of Data Collection & Quality) – Co-chair of 2008 CASRO Data Quality Conference, past MRA Board Member and currently active MRA member
- Senior RTi Researchers have participated in development of Data Quality Standards for many of our clients.
RTi addresses Data Quality via a multi-faceted policy that encompasses:
- Maintaining long term partnerships with our data providers, and continually working with these partners to improve data quality – including central location testing facilities, telephone rooms, and online panel companies. RTi:
- Will only work with partners who sign off on our rigorous standards and who agree to 100% transparency
- Ensures Data Quality compliance via ongoing monitoring of data collection partners, including conducting periodic on-site visits to mall facilities
- Multi-level data validation, as appropriate based on methodology.
- In-person work is double validated – via telephone validation of 20% of each interviewers’ work plus Sigma Duplicate Number Search
- RTi has created an algorithm to address the unique data quality challenges presented by online research. Online data quality is assured based on RTi’s use of:
- Adherence by all online data providers to required panel recruitment procedures (Triple opt-in, blend of recruitment sources)
- Peanut Labs Optimus Program – digital “fingerprinting” to identify duplicate respondents – who are removed from the data set and replaced
- Identification and removal of “speeders” (achieved by setting a minimum acceptable interview length on a project-by-project basis)
- Ongoing efforts to develop more engaging survey instruments
- RTi’s Better Survey Team is comprised of individuals from multiple disciplines (client service, project director, field director, statistician, data collection agents) who are charged with identifying ways to improve the surveys we ask respondents to take. In order to optimize our respondents’ survey experience we are continually assessing and refining:
- Survey design
- Wording/flow of questions
- Survey length
- Interactivity/task variance
- Programming technologies
- The team conducts ongoing research to assess how survey modification alternatives will impact respondent engagement and satisfaction.