INTERVIEWER NETWORK

VR has a national interviewer network consisting of about 400 interviewers. This network is regionally based and covers all 28 administrative regions of the country. There is an interviewer team in each regional center. Almost 1/4 of those included in the teams are in the Sofia interviewer network. For the rest of the regions, the number of interviewers is between 5 and 20. Approximately 2/3 of the interviewers are women and there is a wide range of ages (between 19 and 65). Young people predominate among interviewers. A considerable number of them are students in Sociology or Social and Political Science, Economics etc. in different Bulgarian Universities. VR organizes a separate briefing session for each individual survey to train and instruct interviewers and team leaders.

DATA COLLECTION METHODS

As part of its service capabilities, the VR staff selects the appropriate data-collection technique to best address the client's information needs in the most cost-effective way. VR has extensive expertise in the following qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques:

• 1. face-to-face interviews
• 2. in-depth interviews
• 3. telephone interviews
• 4. focus groups
• 5. omnibus surveys
• 6. desk research
• 7. mail-in surveys
• 8. dairy studies
• 9. content analysis
• 10. household panel surveys and panel elite surveys
• 11. on-line surveys
  
  MONITORING SERVICES

  
  Vitosha Research assigns several specialized monitoring services.

  1. 1. Regular monitoring of the radio, press and TV programs. It enables reliable and qualitive monitoring of information and events, presented by the media, as well as working out express analytical reports.
     
  2. 2. Monitoring of the facilities for external advertisement.
     
  3. 3. Monitoring of the information and communication technologies in Bulgaria.
     
  4. 4. Monitoring of the 'hidden' econom