After the pre – data collection conditions are met, the project manager kicks off the data collection for that project. While the data collection is going on, the project manager ensure key quality controls are met. Such quality controls at this stage include;

• Accompaniments, back checks and spot checks.
• Supervisor accompanies 20% of each interviewer’s work in which 30% of the information is verified instead of few questions.
• Supervisor conducts 20% physical back checks of each interviewer’s work.
• Supervisor ensures 10% telephonic call-backs have been done from office.
• The project manager conducts 5% field spot checks while fieldwork is going on.
• Sample size stint, GPS & Interview length.
• Supervisor ensures that no interviewer conducts more than 10% of the total interviews during the entire field work.
• Supervisor must ensure that each interviewer's work captures 70% unduplicated GPS to show where interviews were done .
• Supervisor must ensure accurate timestamps for all real time interviews uploaded in our server. This eliminates cheating by checking on correct length of interview and time taken between interviews. If the length show less time of interviewing than anticipated or there was no time difference from one interview to the other by an interviewer, the interviews are discarded and deleted from the system and interviewer notified.
• Quota monitoring & Data review
• The project manager ensures that the achieved interviews are checked against target quotas.
• As real time data streams in daily, the entire data is checked for completeness/cleanliness (No missing data where there should be), vague, duplicated and an unprobed open ends, etc.
• The data is also checked for an unusual trends/distortions through automated dashboards.
• Research ethics as part of quality control

During fieldwork, Neotrends Research Africa adhere to certain ethics while collecting data. Such ethics as outlined by Marketing and Social Research Association and other worldwide research bodies, include but not limited to:

• Informing the respondent about the nature of research, time it will take to do the interview and why it is important for them to participate
• Assuring the respondents of non disclosure of the information they provide to us without their written consent
• Non disclosure of the name of the client we are working for to avoid potential bias from both interviewers and respondents
• We don’t interview minors without the consent of the guardian
• We don’t test products on respondents without express and written confirmation of the client that the products are harmless
• We respect, observe and are aware of certain cultural values, traditions and taboos practiced by certain communities
• Unless the methodology dictates we give incentives, we don’t use incentive as a bait for respondents to participate in the surveys