BRYANSTON – An independent consultant has recently commended the AMPS project, on which African Response is co-contracted.

In 2004, African Response won half of the SAARF AMPS and RAMS projects, ending a thirty year dominance by one of the largest research companies in South Africa.

Anina Maree, Media Director at African Response states, "We are exceptionally proud of being able to work on the SAARF projects – which are of such importance to the South African media industry. Besides being an international standard for projects of this size, having two contractors on these projects ensures that the skills of media measurement are extensively spread in industry"

Last month, Erhard Meier, independent consultant, visited South Africa to conduct an audit on the AMPS project. "It is an extremely complex project," states Maree, "and it is vital that an outside party be invited to examine the project to judge whether it is at its most efficient and produces accurate results."

The brief was provided by SAARF, which stipulated the following objectives for the audit:

• To learn about, understand and examine the procedures and processes in place for the provision of AMPS data to the industry, and to assess their impact on the results in terms of accuracy, stability and avoidance of potential bias
• Also to consider AMPS in the international context and future demands

The approach entailed discussions with contractors and verification of procedures through detailed examination of relevant documents and data. He also observed interviews in the field, as well as the data capture, editing, cleaning and quality control procedures.

Meier found that in international comparison, AMPS is an extremely well designed and executed survey. Respondent selection and interviews are well executed with good respondent rapport and Collection procedures are performed extremely diligently. He also found that check-back procedures are good and of relatively high levels.

Most importantly Meier found that the readership levels by contractor are nearly identical. "This is of particular relevance," states Maree "as this is testament to the fact that there are high levels of consistency between contractors"

African Response have also recently been awarded their ISO 9000:2001 certification, an internationally approved system for quality management, self assessment and third party assessment for business, making them the first BEE research house with a quality certification.

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