Fieldwork is Research
The field team is not a group that collects data. It is the technical structure responsible for implementing the research design.
Every project therefore handles the field process as one chain. If any link is weak, the final dataset carries it.
- Sampling
- Access
- Interview
- Verification
- Quality control
- Data management
Real Scale, Real Operations
ID’s field experience spans different target groups and different collection models.
In the World Bank–KOSGEB SME study, 11,062 enterprise visits were completed across all 81 provinces. At that scale the field cannot be managed by adding enumerators: daily targets, regional coordination, access to the enterprise, back-checks and central tracking of field progress have to run together.
In WHO / Ministry of Health studies, 15,000 household visits were carried out nationwide, and 8,600 households in a separate study. In the ILO/İŞKUR NEET PRO study, 4,800 young people were interviewed face to face across 31 provinces.
What these projects share is not their size. It is maintaining the same field discipline across very different target groups.
Right Person, Right Place, Right Method
The most basic error in fieldwork is getting the right answer from the wrong person. Before collection starts, the target group definition, eligibility criteria, sampling list, access method and interview channel are settled.
Not every study uses the same collection method. Face-to-face CAPI may suit a household survey while CATI is more efficient for business managers; CAWI may fit a dispersed, digitally connected group. For some projects the right answer is a mixed-mode design.
CAPI • CATI • CAWI
ID’s quantitative data collection capacity covers three main methods.
- CAPI — Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing
- Face-to-face interviews on a tablet or phone. Used particularly for household, community and enterprise research and wherever physical verification in the field is needed.
- CATI — Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing
- Computer-assisted interviews by telephone. Effective for fast access to dispersed target groups, central supervision and studies that need repeat calls.
- CAWI — Computer-Assisted Web Interviewing
- The participant completes the survey online. A strong option for digitally connected target groups, internal institutional research and particular professional groups.
A design question
One Method Does Not Suit Everyone
In a micro-entrepreneur study it may be possible to reach one target group by telephone. In the same study, some participants can complete the survey themselves through a digital link, while others need face-to-face support.
Field design therefore always starts from a single question: how do we reach this target group most reliably?
The fastest method is not always the best one, and the cheapest is not always the most efficient. But when the right channel is matched to the right target group, both quality and cost improve.
Enumerator Training
Field quality starts with training. Handing an enumerator a form is not field training.
Training at ID covers the purpose of the study, the target group, the logic of the questionnaire, skip and filter rules, ethical rules, neutral questioning, sensitive questions, handling objections, device use and data security. Desk tests and field pilots may follow.
The aim is not that the enumerator can read the question, but that they understand why it is being asked.
Pilot Before Scale
A pilot is not a formality. It shows us the ambiguities in the questionnaire, the filters that do not work, the real interview duration, participant reactions and the logistical problems of the field.
A small error found in a pilot and fixed before national fieldwork is cheap. The same error found after 10,000 interviews is expensive. The pilot is one of our most important field risk management tools.
Daily Field Monitoring
We check while the field is running, not after it has finished. In large studies, looking only at the total number of completed interviews is not enough.
A set of indicators is tracked daily, which means problems surface during fieldwork rather than after it.
- Completed interviews
- Refusal rates
- Break-offs
- Out-of-scope records
- Provincial and regional distribution
- Enumerator performance
- Interview durations
- Progress against sampling targets
Paradata
How an interview was conducted matters as much as the answers it produced.
One of the main advantages of digital collection is that it generates paradata — information about the process rather than the content: start and end time, duration, device information, GPS, per-question timings, re-entries.
These indicators are particularly valuable for identifying unusual records and field performance problems.
Quality Control in the Field
Quality is not separate from the field team. At ID, data collection and QA/QC are not two worlds: the field team produces data while the quality team watches the process.
Depending on the project this can include back-checks, telephone verification, GPS verification, duration checks, logical consistency checks, duplicate detection and enumerator-level performance review.
Our corporate QA/QC approach applies verification rates of up to 20% and above of field records; the rate for a given project is set by its needs.
A field story
A Field Story: The Count Is Fine, But Is the Quality?
Say an enumerator completes 25 interviews in a day. At first glance that looks like strong performance. Then we look at the data: the average interview duration is half that of other enumerators, the answer distributions are unusually similar, the GPS points sit very close together, and some filters have barely triggered.
At that point the question changes. It is no longer "how many surveys did they complete?" but "were these surveys actually conducted properly?"
This is exactly where field management and data analytics meet.
Hard-to-Reach Populations
Standard fieldwork is not enough for some groups. Migrants, people under temporary protection, NEET young people, rural women, prisoners and detainees, micro-entrepreneurs and informal businesses all require specific access strategies.
ID has field experience with women, refugees, young people and the prison population. In two criminological profile studies, 1,895 convicted and remand prisoners were interviewed face to face across 35 prisons.
In studies of this kind, ethics, trust and the right communication matter as much as the logistics.
Qualitative Fieldwork
Not everything can be measured with a questionnaire. Some answers live in accounts rather than in numbers.
ID’s field capacity therefore includes focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, expert interviews, stakeholder interviews, enterprise visits and observation work.
In policy and development research in particular, qualitative fieldwork is what explains the "why" behind a quantitative finding.
Technology-Enabled Fieldwork
Technology does not only make the field faster; it makes it visible.
Digital collection systems allow the field operation to be monitored centrally. Depending on the project this can use KoBoToolbox, tablet-based collection, CATI systems, online survey infrastructure, GPS, time stamps and Power BI dashboards.
Even when field teams work across different provinces, the central team can see where, how much and at what quality data is being produced.
Fieldwork Across Türkiye
ID is structured to work across all 81 provinces and 26 NUTS-2 regions. Our corporate portfolio carries experience of more than 100,000 interviews at varying scales.
But capacity for us is not geographic reach alone. The real capacity is holding the same standard across different provinces.
From Field to Clean Data
Field data is raw material. Completing an interview is not the end of the process.
Field data becomes analysis-ready after logic checks, missing data review, duplicate checks, coding, cleaning and verification.
Field operations and data management are therefore not run separately: how the data is collected is designed from the start around how it will be analysed.
