ABSTRACT
A large-scale survey is a complex system of interrelated activities and processes that must be well-integrated and controlled in order to produce a quality product. If one component of the system performs poorly, the result may be poor quality no matter how well the other components perform. As an example, if interviewers are poorly trained or supervised, there may be numerous errors in the data regardless of how well the questionnaire is designed. For this reason, government statistical agencies and other survey organizations have developed methods for monitoring and controlling the performance of survey operations so that problems can be corrected before they have had a chance to affect survey quality. In this chapter, we review some of these methods and procedures, which are referred to collectively as quality assurance.
