AM PARTNERS

A Public Survey is a sociological research method that uses question-based or statistical surveys to collect information about how people think and act. The results of such a survey may be used for quantitative or statistical analysis or qualitative assessment related to initially specified topics and questions. Quantitative surveying includes collection, verification, analysis, and compilation of quantitative information related to the topic assigned. Surveying and statistical analysis respectively serve as the main tools for collection and compilation of necessary information. To this end, AM Partners offers the measures/services below:

1. Summarizing/defining the goal of a survey. The goal of a survey determines whom we shall survey and what we shall ask them. If our goals are unclear, the results will probably be unclear as well. Some typical goals include as follows: a) potential market for a new product or service; b) ratings of current products or services; c) somebody’s attitude towards something; d) customer/patient satisfaction levels, etc.;
2. Selecting a sample frame (the so-called general population). This largely relates to selecting a large group of people who will be the target of the survey and respond to the questions asked. The sample frame of a planned survey may include some special groups of people or entities by a certain feature (target respondents of certain age and/or gender, involved in a certain activity, influencing a certain activity, performing certain functions, etc.) or may cover the whole population.;
3. Sampling or sample size calculation. Statisticians know that a small and representative sample can reflect the group wherefrom it is drawn. The larger your sample, the more precisely it reflects the target group. However, the precision improvement rate decreases as your sample size increases. We suggest ensuring at least 95% of Confidence Level and 5% of Confidence Interval of the survey results.;
4. Offering an interviewing method. Interviews may be either personal (when the Interviewer asks questions face-to-face to respondents), or telephone surveying, e-mail surveying, etc.;
5. Questionnaire design. For the purposes of quantitative surveys, the questionnaires should be semi-standard and mostly include closed-end questions, i.e. by considering the pre-defined response options;
6. Pre-test of questionnaires and finalization of a survey tool. Once ready and introduced/explained to surveyors, the questionnaire should be pre-tested through a short but intensive fieldwork. The pre-test may identify various shortcomings, such as unclear questions, wrong sequencing and logical skips, irrelevant answer options, hard questions rejected by respondents, etc.
7. Fieldwork interviewing (in face-to-face interviews). The selection and interviewing of respondents is usually regulated by the initial rules and guides. AM Partners uses electronic tablets and web-based SurveyMonkey software for storing the information in a special database with different options for exporting into MS Excel, SPSS, etc. 
8. Quality control and data verification. The quality of the collected information is ensured by supervisors by managing and guiding the fieldwork process. Each supervisor controls and coaches the working activities of a group of surveyors/interviewers. Once the fieldwork is completed, answers to all the questions are reviewed and verified to reveal any possible mistakes, typos or shortcomings. The database cleaning is followed by initial analysis and selection of relevant tabulations.
9. Analysis and compilation. This final stage of quantitative surveying covers making tabulations and cross-tabulations, i.e. for the survey findings and interdependencies among various issues within the survey tool. All the tabulated information is compiled in an analytical reports.

The qualitative surveying comes to complement the quantitative aspects of almost all assignments or even replace them totally if it is impossible to provide quantitative surveying due to the lack of relevant resources or for any other reasons. The list of specific tools covers qualitative interviews with narrow experts and other informants (stakeholders, implementers, officials, etc.), control group assessments, focus group discussions, and other instruments, depending on the features of each task.