The Fieldwork Exchange is part of the MrWeb UK market research resource - you can also search for full service agencies, omnibus providers, independent research consultants or viewing facilities on the site, as well as jobs and news archives. FieldEx enables you to compile a list of suppliers of fieldwork to receive a brief, from two sources: Your own contacts - just type in the names of up to 6 agencies you know (or as much of the name as is necessary to distinguish them from other agencies) in the boxes at the top of the page a search of our directory, according to criteria you specify, using the lower part of the form If you wish, you can of course choose one or the other - ie you can leave the top 6 boxes blank, and your list will consist purely of qualifying companies with no nominees added, or you can go to the bottom of the form and enter '0' in the box in the middle of 'Find me a maximum of __ qualifiers (max 50 for one search).' - and your list will consist entirely of companies you have named. Searching You can search for fieldwork agencies specialising in particular sectors, countries or regions, respondent types (eg business-to-business, consumer, kids...) and fieldwork types. To multicode any of these requirements just select the first sector / country / whatever, hold down the Ctrl button and keep selecting. note that if you hold down the Ctrl button before selecting the first one, you will search for 'Any' as this is the default option and will remain highlighted. (This is true on any Internet form!) Note that you can choose to search for companies that specialise in all the specified sectors / countries etc.., or any one. If eg sector is not important, leave the selection saying 'Any'. Note that if you search for more than 10 qualifiers, you will not be abe to send the brief to more than 10 when you have completed it. Sending briefs to more than 10 potential suppliers is pretty anti-social as it will mean they waste a lot of time quoting for jobs they have less than a ten per cent chance of getting, so we try to discourage it!! Typically a brief will be sent to two, three or four agencies. When you have set your search criteria / typed in your nominated companies, go to the bottom of the page and click on the green button marked 'Find Agencies'. Selecting agencies to receive your brief From the resulting list, you have the option of sending individual emails if you wish - just click on the email links - but the idea of the Exchange is to use the site to brief people. Down the right hand side of the results page you will see a set of boxes marked 'Send Brief' - these should already be ticked when you first see the page. You can deselect any companies you wish to leave out of the briefing. In the box at the bottom, you can specify the number of companies you wish to receive the brief - maximum ten. Say you choose four - quite a good number - the FIRST FOUR on the page with their boxes ticked will receive it. The last tickable box on this page is marked 'Tick this box __ if you have your brief ready to paste in - otherwise you will get a form to complete.' FieldEx gives you the option of pasting your own brief, complete with bullet points and paragraphs, or using a form to prompt and structure your brief. Remember you can always look ahead to the next page in FieldEx by clicking on the button at the bottom of a page, then use the browser's 'Back' button to return and try something else - except of course once you have clicked the button to email suppliers as we can't call the emails back :) Briefing Form This prompts you for the main information required for a fieldwork brief - it may serve as a good checklist even if you are quite an experienced research / fieldwork buyer - personally I always make a point of forgetting something when briefing agencies... The 'Fieldwork summary' part of the form is the crucial one and allows you to specify numbers and types of interview for up to 3 stages of a project. If you have more than 3 in mind, or indeed if you have no stages as such but want to describe some other programme of research, just use one of the more general text boxes. As a general rule, try to keep the amount of text in these down to a minimum unless you are sure it is important - you can always discuss the details with providers later - for the moment you just want to get an indication of willingness to quote / availability and suitability, and of course cost! Leave the password at the bottom saying 'guest' in most cases. If you have a password you will be able to save your brief in a permanent file on the site and come back to it at a later date - otherwise it is not necessary for FieldEx.