APPENDIX 2: GLOSSARY OF TERMS
CAPI - Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing is conducted face-to-face, employing flat screen monitors similar to laptop computers. The questions appear on screen for the interviewer to ask the question and the appropriate response codes are keyed in directly according to the respondent's answers. Questions can also be filtered depending on answers to previous questions.
Coding - The process of allocating codes to open-ended responses given by respondents - by then grouping responses together, this facilitates the analysis of data.
Fieldwork - The collection of primary data from respondents by means of a survey.
Probing - Following up a respondent's answer or comment in order to find out more about it, for example, by asking: "Why is that?" or "In what way?".
Quota - The specification to which respondents for interviews are recruited. This involves specifying the number of interviews required within certain groups - e.g. the number of males and females, those who use the internet versus those who don't etc.
Sample - A part or subset of a population taken to be representative of the population as a whole for the investigative purposes of research.
Sample points - number of specific areas where the research took place - these are selected via our sampling unit to enable us to find respondents within the target audience.
SEG - Social Economic Group. The standard six social grades, commonly used in research, are based on the current or previous occupation of the chief income earner in the household. ABC1 includes professional, managerial and non-manual occupations, while C2DE includes manual and unskilled occupations and the long-term unemployed. Most market research uses the classification called "social grade", originally developed in the advertising industry. Social grade classifies everybody on the basis of the chief income earner in their household, into one of six categories, A, B C1, C2, D or E. There is a detailed manual classifying every possible occupation into one of these categories, but broadly the groups are divided as follows:
A Higher managerial/administrative/professional
B Intermediate managerial/administrative/professional
C1 Supervisory, clerical, junior managerial/administrative/professional
C2 Skilled manual workers
D Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers
E On state benefit, unemployed, lowest grade workers
We usually group the ABC1s as they are professional/non-manual occupations and the C2DEs as they are manual/unskilled occupations. The social grade classification is important in reporting our survey results, but it is often also integral to the survey design - we check the social grade profiles of our samples to ensure that they are representative of the whole population, and often use it as a basis for quotas and weighting.
Weighting - Weighted data analyses adjust the raw survey data to represent the population from which the sample is drawn.