Field management
Quota management
CallWeb supports completion quotas based on single-character stratification (e.g., gender) and multiple-character stratification (e.g., gender within age groups) as well as compound stratification (e.g., a set of quotas on gender and a set on age groups). Membership to a stratum can be based on pre-populated data as well as on data collected in the questionnaire itself and on a combination of such. Quota targets can be modified at any time during the data collection period. Once a quota is filled, respondents from that stratum are redirected within the questionnaire, for total control over the handling of the situation.
Strata and quotas are defined in a special type of question: the QUOTA type. A question is a QUOTA question if the keyword "QUOTA" is present on the question name instruction. The syntax of the question text is as follows (in this syntax, quotas, commas and equal signs are significant):
The ingredients of the definition of quotas are as follows:
Stratum membership is determined by the value stored in the QUOTA variable. For example, if the QUOTA variable contains a 4 for a particular case, that case belong to quota number 4. Response categories may be defined (and labelled) for QUOTA questions but this is not mandatory. If they are defined, the labels are used by the report modules.
A particular quota is deemed complete when the number of cases with a value greater than zero in the "complete" variable is equal to or greater than the target stated in the QUOTA question for that stratum.
QUOTA questions are subject to display conditions: the quota criteria are activated only if the display condition is true.
Several QUOTA questions may be used in a questionnaire; they are used if and when the flow of the questionnaire reaches them. Therefore, a first set of quotas could be imposed on a first characteristic, early in the questionnaire or based on prepopulated data, and a second set of quotas could take effect later, maybe based on data collected as part of the interview or calculated data.
The following constraints apply to QUOTA questions: