We have a base fieldwork infrastructure of 300 interviewers linked to 25 fieldwork offices around South Africa, covering all 9 provinces, and all language, race, and cultural groups. This infrastructure is easily expanded to up to 1 000 interviewers, whom we’ve trained and worked with before.

The interviewers, who work for us on a monthly basis, are formed into teams of three plus an experienced supervisor. These teams are allocated to 25 field managers who we have worked with for up to 20 years.

These fieldworkers are people local to the area in which they’ll work, because they know the local conditions and customs better than anyone. This improves their ability to gain access to communities and persuade respondents to be interviewed. Wherever possible, we strive to match the profiles of interviewers to those of the respondents; our findings have shown that this increases interview quality.

We also employ a team of high-level executive interviewers to conduct interviews with senior executives in businesses, government, and SMMEs.