End of project panic! - Top-up sampling made easy

So the project was carefully planned, all the background work was done and the questionnaire was created.   The sample was extracted from your database and carefully balanced by region, age, sex and a variety of other criteria so that the project will provide exactly the results your client needs.

BUT you are approaching the end of the project and the response rate has been lower than expected, so the interviewers are rapidly running out of sample to work with, and the client is expecting the results in a couple of days!  To make things worse you are running out of sample in some quota cells more than others, and you have to be careful not to use more sample from the original database than necessary because it is needed for other projects.

Now, can you go back to the database and pull out more sample to the same criteria in exactly the quota cells needed?  It probably needs to be provided to the interviewing team within the next hour or so to avoid wasting their time, and your DP team is always busy so you can’t expect them to do it for you immediately.

MARSC is a sample management system that allows the MR Executive to define sample using complex criteria without specialist DP knowledge.  Using MARSC the MR Executive could easily call up the original project definition, check that the latest interview outcomes have been processed and run a report to establish what cells require more sample.  A single button click then automatically defines a top-up sample with the correct numbers in each cell based on the response rates for that project so far.  Have you got five minutes to do this? Well that will be all you need.

Job done!  No panic, no time lost, and now you can get on with the rest of your day’s work.

To discuss any part of this article please feel free to email Nicky Forsyth at nickyf@centurion-ms.co.uk or call her on 
(+44) 1306 621062. 

 For further information about MARSC please visit www.marsc.co.uk