Quotas are a method of controlling the number of people interviewed within a particular group. You define the requirements for each group and the number of respondents to be interviewed. Once the requisite number of respondents has been interviewed within a group, any subsequent interviews with respondents who would be classed in that group will be terminated unless you specify otherwise.

You can define quotas based on categorical, numeric, text, and Boolean variables.

Quotas based on a single characteristic are known as independent quotas. For example, a quota for age, or a quota for gender.

Quotas based on more than one characteristic are known as dependent quotas. Examples are a quota for age and gender combined, or a quota for region and preferred brand combined.

Each independent or dependent quota that you create is unrelated to all other quotas, so two independent quotas of age and gender are not the same as a dependent quota of age and gender.

The quota system is based on a set of SQL tables that contain the quota definitions, targets, current cell counts, and other information, and quota statements in the script. Each quota has a unique name which you use in the script when you want to check that quota specifically. If you do not name the quota then the interviewing program checks all quotas for which data exists at the current point in the interview. This allows you maximum flexibility in the way you set up and test quotas.