Requirements for conducting the APS vary somewhat between years, but generally include the following:

Submission of all required proposal documents

• Completed GEM APS Survey Report

• A Survey Vendor Proposal, which is a formal description of the proposed methodology composed by the team’s survey vendor.

• Translated APS Questionnaire for those teams who will administer the APS in a language other than English and Spanish. Teams are encouraged to do the translations in cooperation with their vendor and to use back-translation by third parties to establish whether the translations capture the same meaning as the original English version.
  
• Any additional team-added APS questions, which must be approved for content and placement before being included in the team’s questionnaire.
  

Sample Requirements

A representative national sample of at least two thousand (2,000) adults:

• The preferred age range for the target population for the GEM APS is 18 to 99. If this is not possible, then an age range of 18 to 64 may be used.

• All geographic regions of the country, including urban and rural areas. For each respondent, geographic details of the city/region in which they reside are noted. Those considered OUT of the labor force (homemakers, retirees, students) are to be included. Only those people visiting the country, in restraining institutions (prisons, mental institutions), in group quarters or the military are to be excluded from the sample design.

Case or Respondent Identification Number

A unique identification of no longer than 10 digits must be given to each respondent.

Socio-Demographic Items

The National Teams need to ensure that for each respondent the following information is also provided:

• Respondent gender 

• Respondent exact age, in years

• Educational Attainment 

• Main Employment status or current working situation. Before 2011, these were captured in the following seven categories: Full-time work, Part-time work, Self-employed, Unemployed, Retired or disabled, Student, Homemaker, Other. Beginning in 2011, the occupation categories have been split into 8 separate yes/no questions. 

• Annual income of the entire household including the respondent

• Household size, including the respondent

• Main region of country where the respondent resides

• City where the respondent resides  – that which they consider their ‘home city’ or closest major metropolitan center
  

Vendors are also required to include the Sample Strata Indicator if their sample employs stratification. This is based on the GEM APS Strata Definition and Fieldwork Report.  It is found in the Excel workbook “GEM APS Survey Report”, for each sample strata listed as a proposed stratum to sample a particular respondent from, the corresponding number of that listed strata must be entered for each unique ID. For example, if the respondent was sampled from strata 3 (typically the name of one of the regions within a country) as outlined in the aforementioned form, then ‘3’ would be entered in the 20XX GEM APS Data Input Template for that unique respondent. Vendors must also record the date of the survey, the contact method used to reach the respondent (fixed-line phone, mobile-phone, face-to-face), and indicate on which call-back the respondent was reached.

Open-Ended Responses

Teams must record the multiple potential open-ended questions in the APS as fully and accurately as possible and both the English and native-language responses are to be provided in the submitted SPSS data file.

Call-Backs

If the survey administrator cannot reach an individual who has been targeted for the APS questionnaire, they must call-back (5 times, if by phone) or revisit (3 times, if face-to-face) in an attempt to interview this person.

Timing of Work

The APS must be administered at different times during the day so that respondents are sampled during and after work hours. The survey cannot be conducted entirely during holiday periods or some other time of year as this may bias the types of respondents available for sampling.

Submission of APS Data

All fieldwork is to be completed and the final SPSS data set together with all documentation including the completed Strata Definition and Fieldwork Report are provided to the Data Team in July of each year.