In a short essay, discuss the importance of properly supervising field workers and list and discuss the four elements of field worker supervision

What will be an ideal response?

Supervision of field workers means making sure that they are following the procedures and techniques in which they were trained. Supervision involves quality control and editing, sample control, control of cheating, and central office control.
a. Quality control of field workers requires checking to see if the field procedures are being properly implemented. If any problems are detected, the supervisor should discuss them with the field workers and provide additional training if necessary. To understand the interviewers' problems, the supervisors should also do some interviewing.
b. An important aspect of supervision is sampling control, which attempts to ensure that the interviewers are strictly following the sampling plan rather than selecting sampling units based on convenience or accessibility. To control these problems, supervisors should keep daily records of the number of calls made, the number of not-at-homes, the number of refusals, the number of completed interviews for each interviewer, and the total of all interviewers under their control.
c. Cheating involves falsifying part of a question or the entire questionnaire. An interviewer may falsify part of an answer to make it acceptable or may fake answers. The most blatant form of cheating occurs when the interviewer falsifies the entire questionnaire, filling in answers without contacting a respondent. Cheating can be minimized though proper training, supervision, and validation of fieldwork.
d. Central office control involves tabulating the responses to important demographic characteristics and key questions. It also includes checking on the quotas to make sure they are being met. Supervisors provide quality and cost-control information to the central office so that a progress report can be maintained.