Best Practices/Guidelines/Standards Adoption

ISSRF as Third Party Assessor

Fundamentals behind the activities of the ISSRF is quality and quality of data collected and statistics generated. To improve quality of data collections through surveys, the emphasis is training of human resources involved in field surveys and their certification. In addition to this, appropriate standards are developed and implemented. One such standard practice propagated by ISS&RF to enhance value to surveys is Third Party Assessor (TPA) services to Survey Agencies and Institutions (SAI) with the following components:

• TPA will independently sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with SAI to assess the survey quality of the SAI and to provide constructive feedback and measures to improve the quality of processes and outcomes
• SAI to give full access to all the survey and training instruments, field arrangements, personnel, field offices and all sort of data and materials involved to TPA.
• SAI to expect written feedback report from the TPA on agreed components and periodicity. 

Training Monitoring :

• TPA senior personnel will participate in the Training of Trainers (ToT).
• State/ regional level personnel will be joining the on-line or face-to-face zonal/regional trainings.

Validation of qualification, experience, and training of human resources :

• At each training venue, TPA’s staff would be deployed to verify the qualification documentation and certify whether the field manpower is qualified (graduates etc.) and trained (certified field investigators, etc.). 
• They will also invigilate over the written test, if any, that will be administered internally by SAI.

Process monitoring :

• TPA will document the processes followed during training.
• They will document whether SAI is adhering to protocol, if any, regarding helpdesk, outreach assistance, media cell, scoring and the operation of the Survey Monitoring Cell (SMC).
• Process documentation for SMC and Scoring Cells, including due diligence for indexing/analyzing the document flow from field survey.

Fieldwork monitoring :

• Back-checking of results based on a sub-sample of locations/respondents across all locations and typologies
• This will be done centrally through photographic verification and geo-coordinate matching or any other suitable methods.
• All sample locations that are provided to surveyors/assessors will be made available to the TPA for sampling.