Quantitative Research

CMI customizes its approach to meet each project’s unique needs. In a typical year, CMI completes over 175 projects and conducts more than 500,000 interviews via telephone, mail, the Internet or in person. CMI works in both the business-to-business and business-to-consumer market segments, designing and executing studies that range from tactical ad hoc projects to on-going tracking studies addressing strategic performance and branding issues.

Phone Interviews	Internet Surveys
In-person interviews	Mail Surveys

Phone Interviews

Quality telephone interviewing relies on thoughtful questionnaire design and programming, thorough interviewer training, and diligent monitoring. The vast majority of CMI telephone surveys are computer-assisted to minimize interviewer error, maximize consistency of administration, and facilitate sample management. The CMI project team works closely with phone center supervisors to ensure that they understand the objectives of each study and that interviewers are thoroughly trained on the content and flow of each survey instrument. Other specific quality control measures include:

Role plays to improve fluency with the survey,
Initial monitoring for accuracy, flow, and consistency (a portion of each interviewer’s interviews is monitored),
Ongoing, unannounced, “spot” monitoring throughout the field period,
Remote monitoring capabilities for clients.

In-Person Interviews

In some cases, the nature of the survey or of the survey population requires that interviews be conducted in person. In those instances, CMI employs its network of field services to recruit respondents to a central location, whether it be a mall facility, church basement, hotel, or multiple interviewing facilities. Screeners are carefully crafted to ensure that the correct respondents are recruited, and interviewers are fully briefed on the objectives, flow, and content of the survey. Strict quality control procedures are enforced to ensure quality and consistency.

Internet Surveys

Initially, CMI utilized Internet surveys to collect data from employees and customers sampled from client databases. We have conducted numerous internal and customer satisfaction surveys through this medium, taking advantage of the quick turnaround time and unique opportunities an Internet survey provides, such as exposing respondents to visual stimuli. The success of Internet surveying has led us to expand in scope and employ a variety of commercially available panels, as well as to construct custom panels for some of our clients.

View Internet Survey Demonstration #1
View Internet Survey Demonstration #2

Mail Surveys

For some applications, mail surveys remain the most viable option. CMI has conducted hundreds of mail surveys over the years, processing hundreds of thousands of completed questionnaires. CMI utilizes scanning technology to increase processing efficiency whenever possible, and has extensive experience in methods to increase response rates.