With nearly two decades of experience conducting public opinion research projects and working on political campaigns, QGS can manage your strategic research project from start to finish. We specialize in:

• Developing and refining research goals
  
• Instrument design and development
• Fielding and on-the-ground oversight (viewing focus groups, field testing)
• Sample design 
• Local vendor selection
  
• Full analysis and reporting, with strategic recommendations
• Moderator guide design and development
• Moderator and interviewer training
  

Relying on our knowledge of the region, we can help make sure you are asking the right questions to the right people. We have contacts with reliable data collectors around the world and can identify the vendor best suited to carrying out your research. We work closely with the vendor to make sure your project meets the highest methodological standards, from translations to interviewer training to pre-tests.

A Riva-trained moderator with experience conducting hundreds of focus groups, Christine Quirk can train your local moderator and/or brief him or her on the goals of your project to ensure your focus groups collect the maximum amount of data. If problems come up in your first group, we can make sure they are corrected by the second.

We can also coordinate with your local data collection agency to ensure questionnaire translations are accurate, to make sure interviewers are adequately trained and to observe pre-tests. We can also double check your vendor's data collection methodology to make sure you get what you're paying for.

On-the-Ground Project Management

Worried that your local data collector isn't meeting your high standards? Want someone to watch and report on your focus groups? Too strapped for time and money to make the overseas trip yourself?  With QGS located in a major hub for travel to Asia, the Middle East, the Former Soviet Union and Africa, we can be on the ground quickly and cost-effectively to make sure your project stays on track.  We'll go to those off-the-beaten track places so you don't have to.

Relying on a decade of US political campaign experience, we can also manage your phone banks, help develop communications plans or develop voter outreach programs. QGS oversaw one of the first strategic telephone banks in Ukrainian election history, on behalf of President Yushchenko's party. She also served as Observer Coordinator for the 2010 Election Observation Mission in Afghanistan, deploying 50 international observers in an active conflict zone, and more importantly, sending them home again in one piece.

Data Analysis and Reporting 

Relying on our experience and insight gained living and working in complicated political environments, we'll take your quantitative or qualitative data and turn it into a strategic, actionable report in whatever format works best for you. We can write anything from a full length analysis of your poll or focus groups to a press release or op-ed touting the findings. 

QGS believes you shouldn't have to be involved with a project from the beginning to understand the findings and recommendations, so our strategic reports are well-written and user-friendly. We believe that if your data sits on a shelf collecting dust, you've wasted your money.

Training

QGS can put together a training program that will expose your local partners to the latest in strategic polling, communications and political campaigning techniques. We can also train media representatives on how to read and interpret polling data. We've trained Iraqis, Djiboutians, FATA Pashtuns, Zimbabweans and Ukrainians how to conduct quantitative interviews and moderate discussion groups, Iraqis on the uses of strategic research and Azerbaijanis and Saudis on how to organize, communicate with and mobilize voters on election day.

Special Projects

QGS is available for short term or long term consulting projects. With experience with USAID, DRL and a variety of international NGOs, we can assist with all kinds of special projects. Whether it's a political campaign, polling, communications, voter outreach, election observation mission or a D&G-related project, QGS can help.  We have particular expertise in conflict zones.