This section describes the facilities that are available for sample management, and provides an example of a typical scenario in which sample management is used to control the way in which respondents participate in the survey: see Sample management example scenario.

A database table that holds information about respondents who might take part in the survey, either by dialing in to your company's web page or by being contacted by an interviewer working on an outbound calling project. See Sample table for more information.

A database table that holds information about Sample records that were used for outbound telephone interviewing. History records are written to this table whenever an interview is terminated in some way (for example, stopped or completed) or when a telephone interview drops a Sample record for some reason (for example, because the line is engaged). The information in this table can be used for producing supervisory and productivity reports. See History table for more information.

Scripts that define the way in which sample management will work for a project. See Sample management scripts for more information.

Allow records to be grouped according to how the records have been or might be used in the survey. At the start of a survey, all records are usually held in a single queue. When an interview is in progress for an interview, the record moves into an Active or In-progress queue; when the interview ends, the record moves into a third queue depending on the outcome of the interview. See Queues for more information.

(Known internally as Sample record return codes.) Define the result of an inbound or outbound call. When a sample record is returned to sample management at the end of a call, the interviewing program also returns a call outcome code indicating the result of the call. The sample management script uses these codes to decide which queue it should place the sample record in. See Call and contact outcome codes for more information.

Define values for variables that are used in the sample management script; for example, callback delays for busy and no-answer callbacks, and the maximum number of recalls permitted per record. See Telephone interviewing project parameters for more information.

If sample records contain a TimeZone field specifying the respondent's time zone, sample management can take into account time zone differences between interviewers and respondents when selecting records with appointments for recall. See Time zone management for more information.

Assign sample records to interviewers who have the appropriate qualifications to deal with those calls. For example, if the respondent's preferred language is Spanish, the sample record might be assigned to a Spanish speaking interviewer. See Interviewer qualifications for more information.

The process whereby respondents who connect to your web page are validated before an interview begins. See Authentication of inbound respondents for more information.

The action to take when Sample records are returned to the sample management system at the ends of interviews. See End of interview for more information.

Define the requirements for the sample in terms of the numbers of respondents who have certain characteristics or combinations of characteristics. See Quotas for more information.

Each project has a collection of properties that store information about the project, and each interview has its own set of properties that contain information about that particular interview. You can access project and interview properties in the sample management script and can perform different actions for different types of projects or interviews. In some instances you can change property values or add new properties too. See Sample management scripts and Project and interview properties for details.